Are you there?
by Bond.Jane
Summary: "I need to go Bones, or I'll keep on falling in love with you"
1. The Standing still in the moving on

**Author's note: I have my own theory about the final episode. Time will, I'm sure, prove me wrong. Hart always comes up with a twist we didn't even see coming. But I'm already dreading the time after next week when we will have watched The Beginning in the End. So, hopefully, this story will help carry me- and those of you who read it- through some of that time.**

**Note 2- Thank you to MickeyBoggs for her help with this chapter.**

**Jane**

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**Prologue**

**The moving on in the standing still.**

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"Time takes it all, whether you want it or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end, there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes, we lose them again."

Stephen King, _The Green Mile_

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Booth packed lightly. What could he take with him anyway that would fill the void of her absence? He zipped up the duffel, closed the lights in the apartment and locked the security tap under sink cupboard and the gas meter in hall closet.

Some places were difficult to leave. Or was it that some times were difficult to walk away from?

The sooner the better. The decision had been made. This time with Bones... this was just stupid now. Time. He needed a new time in his life. This division of the Time Before Bones and the Time With Bones would have to be a thing of the past. He would need to find new markers, new things to measure his days by. He would need a new self, more likely. But staying here, seeing her every day, wanting her every day until it hurt so bad he actually found it difficult to get out of bed? Nah, that stuff was not good. It was unhealthy.

And it made her uncomfortable. He hated that.

He had come to realize that holding on to the hope of winning her was just a case of losing in increments. Losing her, losing himself. Hell, losing his mind a little bit every day. It was the triumph of experience over hope.

This mission, this was a heaven sent. Going away, far away. Getting his heart in order, make himself strong again. Make himself worthy. It was a permanent change, like relocating a mountain a couple thousand miles or drawing a new bed for a river. It was a permanent change in the landscape. This old dog would have to learn a new trick.

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Brennan knew many things. Abstract and concrete knowledge. And what knowledge she did not have, she had the skills to learn. What she did not know was how to mend a broken heart. Hers. Booth's. There was no research to help her, no expert to guide her. Not one she could ask anyway. This was the kind of thing she went to Booth for. He was her expert in the matters of the heart.

Except her expert was unavailable for consultation. On this count at least.

So she signed the agreement papers, the insurance papers, took care of the vaccines and, just in case, made a will. Details were important because when she concentrated on concrete details, she did not have to try so hard at keeping herself together. She prepared notices for Cam and Hacker. She had sent those too..

This expedition was going to be a good thing. Even career-wise, it was good. Leaps and bounds forward good. Personally good too. Away from the weight of murder and pain and misery. Away from what's ugly and unkind about mankind. Far enough. Long enough. This was going to give them both time, and time heals everything. Or so it was said. Experience showed her otherwise. Some things time did not heal.

But as long as Booth was there, even if far, to her, it would be like she still had him. A little bit at least. She would not be so alone.

But she had to let go. She was the one who had to open the door for him to walk through, free from her.

She stacked her files neatly and held her tears out of habit. She huddled inside her lab coat, squeezing her molecules into a cohesive form trying to hold herself together because that's what she always did.

She stacked her files neatly on a tray, printed and signed reports, put all her affairs in order. She was as ready to leave as she was ever going to get.

There was just telling Booth now.

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Her phone rang. See? This was why she could not afford to let her guard down for a single moment. That was Booth on the phone. What if she had been a weeping mess now? He would know. He always knew what was going on inside her. She held her tears, it was a private mess of misery and hurt. A visible mess? That was not what he needed. She took a deep breath.

"Brennan."

"Hi, Bones."

"Hi." She noted the silence. She didn't dare fill it in. She had an overwhelming feeling that something was about to change. Something vital. And that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

"Are you still at the lab?"

"Yeah..."

"You should go home. It's late."

"Yeah. Do you wanna stop by? I'll get us some food" And again there was silence. Her heart started thumping against her rib cage, thundering in her veins, drumming in her temples. And air became scarce. God, the flesh was so weak.

"Bones... Listen... I can't"

"Is it Catherine?" It was none of her business. She shouldn't have asked.

"Bones..." It was the way he said it. It was more serious than a date. It was some life changing event. Quite possibly, some extinction level cataclysm.

"Booth."

"I just wanted to tell you to uh... stay safe. Take care, Bones."

"Booth?" She just couldn't process the tone or the words. Or what her gut was yelling at her. Guts do not talk to you. Much less scream. Do they?

"Bones.... I..." On the other side of the line, Booth was feeling that pulling all his teeth out without anesthetic would have been far less painful than extracting her from his life. "I've accepted an assignment. Out of DC..."

"Booth... I…" _I what?_ She didn't even know what to say. She was leaving, she was giving him space and his life back. Why was he leaving? What about Pops and Parker? What about Sweets and Angela and Hodgins and their people at the lab? It was like they were both walking out on them. Almost like leaving them... orphans.

She wanted one thing only: to ask him to stay. And that was the only thing she couldn't do. If he needed the distance, she had to love him enough to let him go. Let him be the one to leave. Let him have his pride. It was what a decent person would do. Give him the distance to get over things. To move on. Just because this was as good as it would ever get for her, it did not mean the same to him. "Where are you going?" Except that it was like missing a vital part of herself. Like her heart.

"Bones... Just... away."

"Is it dangerous?"

What could he say? He opted for silence. In the vast ocean of things unsaid between them, it was only one little thing. Perhaps the last.

Brennan was immobile. Absolutely still. Whenever emotions were too big for her, she became paralyzed. Her fingers were stretched as if in a spasm and her eyelids were wide open, unblinking. The only thing moving was her heart, beating heard, rebelling against her, beating, thumping, storming its way out of her chest.

"Booth... just..." One night. Just one more night. One more conversation, one more meal, one more drink. One more hour or one more minute before she went back to being all alone. "Can I stop by your place?" Her chest rehearsed a breathing movement. Words needed air to come out. "Just to wish you good luck..."

"Oh Bones..." One more time the hesitation. How bad could it be? How much worse could it be? How much more difficult? "I'm at the airport. I've checked in for my flight already."

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Life is generally kind with the choices it gives you: black shirt or white top with those pants, pizza or Thai for dinner. Life warms you in a blanket of commonality of neither here nor there in the choices that you make. Nothing is vital, nothing is potentially life changing or heart-crushing. But then, sometimes, you are put at a crossroads that will forever change your life whether you take a right or a left. Free will becomes a burden, not a gift. A burden that demands action. You wish for nothing but for someone to tell you what to do, or you pray for a road sign pointing you into the right direction because standing still just isn't an option but you don't know what to choose and there's no way you can just create a new path. It's either right or left. No third choice. And no second guessing.

Brennan held the cell phone in her hand knowing she had to chose which way to go now: let him go or ask him to stay.

Because the moment he was ready to leave she realized she ready for him to stay. With her.

She took the car keys and drove to Dulles Airport. She tossed the car into a curb more than parked it and ran, she just ran. Not even sure what flight to look for. She hit her speed dial #1.

If ever there was a moment to believe in something beyond herself, if ever there was a moment to actually pray, this was it. _Oh God... please_. It surprised her that she actually tried to believe it, to put her back into it, into that prayer of sorts that was mostly just _please, please, please_. When he picked up she felt Booth might have been on to something there.

"Bones." Why did he have to sound so defeated?

"Booth. I... huh... where are you?"

"Airport, Bones"

"Where in the airport, Booth?" And all the while she was just running through the terminal building, bumping into people, tripping over suitcases, her vision of the departures screens blurred by something she did not then recognize as tears."

"About to go through security check" And then she saw him. The leather jacket, the broad shoulders, the brown hair. She rushed to him. When she got there, she put her hand on his shoulder. But the man that turned to her was not Booth. Just a smiling guy that resembled him. Story of her life. When she turned around praying for the backbone to get herself through this, it was as if, in her rush to find him, every man in the terminal had the same height and the same bone structure. Like everybody was conspiring to delay her, to let him leave without her saying... without her saying... What exactly was she going to say to him? She stopped realizing suddenly that she was lost in the middle of so many people.

"Bones?" What was she going to say to him? What could she say that did not make it worse for him? "Bones, are you there?" But suddenly the voice was coming through the air, not just through the receiver and she had to turn around and see him there, a bag slung across his shoulder, boarding pass in one hand, the phone on the other, still close to his ear.

She paralyzed. There was so much she wanted to say, and so, so much she wanted to do, but she was overwhelmed by his presence there, his warmth so close to her. Maybe for the very last time. And she just couldn't think of what to do or what to say.

Booth snapped his phone shut and put it away with deliberate movements. He too was struggling for composure, desperately trying to find the right thing to say or do.

"Move it," someone prompted from the behind them in the queue.

"Bones... I..." But what was it that he could say to her? It wasn't like he hadn't opened his heart to her once, like he hadn't closed his eyes and taken that leap of faith. He had. _He had!_ And look where it had landed him. In a pit of moving sand where everything that he did, everything that he felt made it awkward and painful for both of them. No more.

"Booth..." Brennan took a deep breath. Suddenly she felt ridiculous and small. Booth took one more step in her direction, a slow tentative step. But a step nonetheless. With his head tilted down and his profile so strong and true, he was incredibly beautiful. "You were going. Without letting me say goodbye." She hadn't meant for it to be an accusation. She was guilty of the same sin.

His hand made a small awkward movement to her hair but stopped short, as if he just couldn't muster the strength to conclude the gesture.

"I'm sorry, Bones." He wanted to explain. He really did. But there were times when you needed your pride to hold yourself up.

"You're going because of me." It was not a question. So he did not answer it. God knew that it was plain to see.

To Brennan, the air was acquiring a strange texture, something thick and viscous that made breathing impossible.

"Please don't go." There. It was said. The silence between them was so loud it deafened the hullabaloo of the terminal.

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Booth was a strong resilient sort. He had endured plenty in his life. Physically. Mentally. But this? This small voice asking him what he wanted to hear more than anything in his wretched life? This was hell. This was his own mermaid singing to him. And the result would be him crash boom banging it in her shore. But sometimes, the fact that you were forced to be strong was enough to turn you into what you had to be. And him? He had to leave.

"Bones..." He cupped her face in his hands. Marveled at the soft feel of her skin and the warmth of it. Maybe for the very last time. So he committed it to memory. "I need to go Bones." He saw it when her heart splintered and fractured. He felt it in his fingers and in his palms through her skin.

"I need to go or I'll keep on falling in love with you."

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Booth kissed her gently on the forehead, picked up his bag and adjusted it on his shoulder, took his boarding pass out of his pocket and waved goodbye. He was out of words and out of heart to say them even if he had them. He took his place in the queue and walked away from her.

_What if I want you to do that, to keep on falling in love with me?_

"Booth..." The voice came small and faded. He didn't hear it. She tried again. Louder, stronger. "Booth!" But when he turned she realized. Even the strong need protection. She waved. She just stood there, holding herself together out of habit, and waved him goodbye.

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Booth walked out of her sight, past the metal detectors and security guards. He looked tired. He felt it too. He just didn't know how he was going to do this. _Keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together. _He repeated the three little words over and over again. Repeated and repeated until he didn't feel so much like he was going to explode.

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As Booth walked out of her sight, Brennan succumbed to a strange phenomenon. Her heart burst and her body rattled and her eyes overflowed. Her throat closed up. Standing there in the brightly lit departures lounge, she was alone in the darkness. She did nothing to control the tremors that shook her or the copious tears that fell down the sides of her face and traced her neck and her chest and stained her shirt. Her vision clouded.

She cried for minutes, for hours, for days.

Alone.


	2. Chrysalis

**Author's note: Here it goes, chapter 2. With Thank You to MickeyBoggs *fingers crossed, MB*.**

**Note two. Just saw the promo for the finale. Should actually say **_**The Finale**_**. It's like this huge event in my mind, never mind how pathetic it is that a TV show is making my heart squeeze every time I think of next Thursday morning (sue me, I watch it online after the good Canadian people have seen it and uploaded it, thank you guys, I love you). Tell me everything is going to be OK. Please.**

**Anyway.**

**On with the story.**

**Jane**

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Six weeks later, her phone rang a familiar ring tone that hadn't been heard in a very, very long time.

"Brennan."

"Hi Bones!"

Her heart squeezed and twisted and turned in waves of joy and pain. Her breath caught in her chest.

"Booth!" What was the logic follow up to that sound? I_ miss you. Come back. Please?_

"I miss you, Bones."

"I miss you too Booth." She said _I miss you too_ but really she meant _I love you too, Booth. _She knew it. She wished he did too.

There it was, that awkward pause again. There was so much unsaid between them, the silences had become a gap. The sad thing, Brennan thought, was that the silence that used to be a bridge between them had become a moat.

"How are things, Bones? How are you?" They had become strangers. Strangers who knew each other so well. She cleared her throat. Somehow, that civilized conversation, so proper to have over a cup of tea felt all wrong. And she just couldn't bring herself to lose her mind and her heart politely, discreetly. She wanted her Booth back and that was not being OK. Not by a million miles.

"Bones? Bones... are you there?" Was she? She couldn't think back to the last time she had felt less _there. _Less herself. Less empty and pointless.

"Yes, Booth, I'm here. Sorry, I was just about to have a drink."

"Oh... tough case?" Case? No. Not really. Just the shock, that was all.

"No. Not really. I just... Feel like a drink?"

"What are you having?" She needed something strong. Maybe some grade 1 distilled alcohol.

"Tea."

"Aw, Bones, no, no, no. That won't do. You sound like you could use something stronger. Something better served in tiny cups. Come on, have a drink. I know you have a nice bottle hidden in that cupboard under your art books." She had to smile despite herself.

"I'll get it. Am I going to drink alone?" She got a Dixie cup she had saved from a very long time ago. She needed to feel him close.

"Would I ever do that to you?" One the other side of the line she heard the rattling of ice cubes on a glass.

"Are you having whiskey?"

"Yeah. Beer here is not so good." Brennan absorbed the information, filled it and cataloged it under Important Information and Relevant Facts. But she couldn't ask where he was. And she wouldn't.

"But the whiskey is?" Chit chat. That seemed to be all they were capable of. She struggled with the sealed cap of the bottle. He would have taken it from her and open it without effort. But he wasn't really there, was he?

"It's OK, Bones, you can do it"

"Do what?"

"Open the bottle. Just grip and twist."

The bottle offered no resistance, charmed by the command in his voice. She poured a generous amount and stood looking at his favorite sofa.

"Sit, Bones, let's talk for a bit."

Yeah, OK. She could do that. She could talk for a bit. She could do this.

"OK. How are you, Booth?" There was an undertone to her voice. It told him that she wanted to know how _he was_, really was, not how things were or what he was doing. She wanted the truth.

"We've covered that bit, Bones. What I want to know is how_ you_ are."

"I'm fine, Booth."

"Ah... right. So how's work? Any interesting cases?"

Brennan wanted to lie. She wanted to assure him that work was just grand and rolling on wheels. He didn't need to be worrying about her. He needed to stay focused on whatever he was doing because if there was one thing she could read between the lines of his discourse was that it wasn't safe and that it wasn't a walk in the park. And she needed him to come back in one piece. No matter who he came back to.

Somehow she got distracted in her own train of thought, forgot to forge a suitable reply. She got that a lot these days.

"Bones," he called when the silence had become too long. "I asked how's work. Are you gonna answer any time soon or is that a complicated answer?"  
"It's fine Booth. The cases are interesting and..."

"Bull, Bones."

"What?"

"The work Bones. Don't lie."

"What... no... you know I don't really do that..."  
"Bones, stop it now. I mean it. Did you really think I wouldn't know about this?" Her heart twisted into a painful knot. She really didn't think he would know. She really didn't think he would be able to care.

"I... I'm OK, Booth. Really."

"That's not what I asked, Bones." Why was he angry? "I asked _how's work_ and you're lying."

"No, really." She tried to interrupt. She knew he wouldn't let go of the subject until he ferreted the truth out of her. But she needed to try.

"Stop. When were you going to tell me that you aren't working? When were you going to tell me that you haven't been to the lab in more than a month?"

She downed her cup of single malt in one swift movement. She frowned when it burnt her throat. Poured another one. Downed it too. Frowned again.

Simple.

Never.

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_Cam had walked in on Brennan staring at the empty examination table in the central platform, too far gone to process the presence of anyone so close to her. It hadn't taken Cam a whole second to process the scene, to cross reference it with the notice fresh from the FBI clutched in her hand. And she couldn't do this alone. She needed Angela and Hodgins. Brennan was not her best subject. And clearly, the woman needed time to get herself together- which was a euphemism, but, hey the best she could do under the circumstances._

_But when she tried to approach Brennan again, hours later, she was still in the same exact position, still staring at the empty examination table. Angela was sitting at one of the work stations, perfectly still, watching over Brennan's trance. Cam's eyebrow raised in question mark. Angela clamped her hand over her mouth and nodded sadly. _

_It wasn't difficult. It really wasn't. Anyone who had been there when Booth had _died _would recognize the signals. Even if they didn't have the FBI's notice in their hands._

_Angela took Brennan's brittle shell by the hand and took her to sit in her office. They sat around her, Jack, Angela and Cam, Intervention style. They didn't pretend they didn't notice, but they didn't rub in her face how poor a job Brennan was making of pretending to be OK. _

_Brennan did not want a new partner. She would stay in her lab. It was a statement of fact, no more, no less. Just an empty shell of a person uttering a statement._

_And she had. For some time. Until the group of loved ones had to intervene again after two weeks worth of the ghost of Brennan working silently, absently, devastatingly sad in Limbo._

_It was all so fitting that Brennan wanted to work in Limbo. Because she, herself, was stuck there, no way back, no way forward. _

_They made her take a few days off, to take care of her thinning, decomposing self. _

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"I need another drink."

"Fine. I'll have another one myself." This time there was no rattling of ice cubes in the glass. Only the sound of liquid pouring. "What happened, Bones?"

"Nothing, Booth."

"You can start telling me truth any time you feel like it, Bones."  
"Booth... I don't know" Which was the absolute truth. She just couldn't remember. Just like she couldn't remember waking up today. Or the whole of yesterday. And wasn't this whiskey a good thing. For the first time in days she could feel something that was not just that... absence. She welcomed the burning.

"Bones, I want you to promise me something."

"Depends."

"No. I want a promise. An honest to God, bona fide promise."

"You know I can't promise something without knowing what it is I'm promising."

"Yes, you can." She could. Of course she could. Just because he said so and just because she could not argue her point because her brain refused to engage. She poured and downed one more shot. She missed the burning.

"OK. I promise."

"Promise you'll go back to work."

When had silence become so loud?

"Booth?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you safe? Are you being careful?" She could hear him drinking his whiskey in a single gulp.

"I was born careful, Bones. Careful is my middle name."

"No, it's not. Your middle name is Joseph." For a moment, for the briefest of moments, he had his Bones back. And then he lost her again.

"Bones..."

"Yes?"

"I heard what you said at the airport." Silence. She wasn't capable of much more. "I need to sort myself out."

"OK."

"Go back to work, Bones. There are so many people out there that need you".

"Booth!" There was an admonition in her tone of voice, the more energetic thing she had felt in those past six weeks. And it meant _I'll go back with you. I am waiting right here. _

It meant _I'm not done waiting yet._

"Bones, it's late. Go to sleep." Yeah. She could do that. Sleep was getting her through the days, as if she were a chrysalis sleeping away the wait to become... something else.

"Good night Booth."

"Sleep tight, Bones."


	3. Rubble

**Author's note: Thank you all for the lovely reception to this story. Thank you also to MickeyBoggs for her help in getting this chapter up to standard.**

**Note 2: At the time of uploading this chapter, I am mere 23 hours away from knowing how Hart will break our hearts this time. (I'm not so pathetic that I'm counting the minutes). And boy, am I anxious and nervous and, I suspect, ridiculous.**

**Anyway...**

**See you on the other side of the finale.**

**Jane**

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In her motionless skin she thrashed. In her quiet face, she suffocated. In her neatly arranged bed, she was choking. Her inhales were becoming sharper and her exhales shorter. Gasps of clean air couldn't make it all the way into her lungs, trapped by the mouthful of sand and bricks and mortar. A fine sheen of sweat pearling her forehead was her one give away.

Except there was no one there to see it.

Her cell phone buzzed and danced silently on her nightstand, the glow of the screen like a beacon she need to follow in order to breathe.

"Brennan." The sound barely made it out. Her hands clutched convulsively at the sheets still so smooth around her.

"Bones? You OK?"

She wanted to cry in relief, she wanted to run into his arms and make herself small in there.

"Yeah." She pushed at her hair, but the offending strands resisted at her pulls and shoves. Air was still scarce.

"Bad dream?"

"No!" How did he know?

"Fine. Suit yourself. So how's the weather?"  
"What? That's a very radical change of subject..."

"Yeah? Well..."

"Booth?" She tried to breathe. "Yes."  
"Yes, it is a nice summer day or yes, it's raining cats and dogs..."

"Yes, it was bad dream" Her voice cracked a little. Just like her.

"Do you wanna tell me about it?" No, not really.

"How's the weather there, Booth?"

"Ah, well, you know, same old, same old"

"No, I don't know. I don't know where you are." Though she had tried to find out. But all lips were sealed. No one would tell her. The idea that Booth was somewhere on the same planet and yet not _with_ her, was almost paralyzing and slightly devastating.

"Bones?"

"Yeah?"

"You had a bad dream. Let me hold you."

"How?" Her heart stuttered as if it wasn't working properly. The distance never had seemed to her quite so long, quite so insurmountable.

"Go with me on this one, OK, Bones?" He waited for an objection. "Pile a couple of pillows behind you and lay back." For a moment, there was no sound on the line, no indication she had heard him. Then he heard the rustling of sheets and possibly pillows and a sigh.

"OK. Now what?"

"Now you just lay back."

Brennan did just so. She leaned back, slightly on her side, her face flush against a soft pillow.

"Close your eyes, Bones. Close your eyes and breathe. Just breathe." She did because he taught her how. "Breathe." The air, charmed by his voice, flowed effortlessly into and out of her lungs. She wrapped herself in her own arms. "Now tell me about your bad dream."

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_It had been the same dream since Booth left her in that departures terminal. She was in a room, a small, small room. There was nothing inside, but that was OK, soothing even. She was OK alone. She was not afraid. The inside of her mind was a good place to be. A safe place. _

_But then, there were voices and laughter and the small, small room felt crowded. Even though she was still alone. The voices were distracting and she couldn't concentrate on the workings of her mind. She was attracted to what was outside the closed walls of her small room._

_The more she strained to listen, to make out the sounds, the smaller the room felt. _

_And then the walls fell on her. They just crumbled and fell on her, burying her under a pile of bricks and mortar. Not a sound to announce the disaster. Not a rumor._

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"Bones?"

"Yes?"

"I'm here now." The voice was soothing and for a momentary lapse of perception, his long, graceful, fluid body was indeed there with her, comforting and reassuring.

"Booth?"  
"Yes, Bones?"  
"Thank you."

"That's what partners do, Bones." Except he wasn't her partner any more, was he? Not for the last seven weeks and not in the foreseeable future. "You know what? I like holding you."

Brennan closed her eyes. This could not be healthy, this _un_physical connection between them. She liked being held like this too. She liked the way he was breathing on the other side of the line. She liked that he was her one connection to the world. As if when he was on the other side of the line, she wasn't such a ghost of her own life. When he called she was more _of _her life, not so much just left _in it_.

"I like it too, Booth."

Booth breathed deeply. For a moment, they were just both there, holding each other over the distance between them. Possibly, Brennan thought, breaking the laws of physics.

"Bones?"

"Yes?"

"When are you going back to the lab?"

She wasn't sure she would.

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_The Jeffersonian was full of opinions. Full of eyes. Full of good intentions. Hell was paved through with the golden bricks of good intentions. She wanted none. She wanted no pity, no sympathy. She was in a hole she had dug with her own teeth. But she still had her pride and her survival instincts. That was the way she was designed and she couldn't help it, being the survivor that she was. But she could hate the scar tissue that was left after she had handled whatever it was that was done to her._

_The Jeffersonian- her home, her people, was... too much. They cared very actively about her. They showed her that affection every day. They pushed her into taking care of herself. And she was just tired of that too._

_Naturally, she had lost her nerve. _

_She couldn't deal with so many emotions, so much well-wishing and cuddling. She couldn't handle the pressure of being loved like that._

_It was just a character flaw._

_._

_._

_._

"Bones?"

"Yes"

"You're very quiet." Yeah, she was. Couldn't help that either. "Are you still there?"

And wasn't that a good question... The moment Booth had walked through the security gates, all her there_ness _had left her, all her energy, leaving her with nothing but a heart beat. And not much of a heartbeat it was.

"When I was little, I had the cutest little mutt. A stray. A little loud but adorable. One day, I got home from school and the dog wouldn't move, couldn't even open its eyes. But it was still alive. I held it in my arms." The memory was so clear that the Brennan lying in Booth's not - really - there present arms was holding a no - longer - there past little pup. "Mom said that someone had poisond the poor dog. I knew my dog would die. I was five or six, but I knew it, Booth. But the dog was holding on to his last breath. As if it was waiting. When Max walked in and sat next to us, I knew what the dog had been holding out for: my dad."

"Aw, Bones... I'm so sorry..."

"You know what the funny thing is?"

"What?"

"Max didn't even like the dog." Brennan sighed and burrowed deeper into the pillows.

"You can't choose who you love, Bones. You can't chose you you care about."

"I know. But affection is so... capricious."

For a moment they were both silent. Each entertained difficult thoughts about love. In the end, from two different hearts, from two separate minds, it all boiled down to this: the lies they told each other, that he was moving on, that she didn't have an open heart, were like a pile of rubble the center had been reduced to. And that rubble was unstable and they needed to clear it to start rebuilding. Except that coming clean was, quite possibly, the most selfish thing either of them could do to the other.

"Booth?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you uh.... Do you have time to hold me for a little while longer?" Across the distance, connected only by invisible lines of cellular telephones, Brennan heard Booth inhale deeply as if he had been taken by surprise and then make himself comfortable, wherever he was.

"For you Bones, I have all the time in the world." She closed her eyes and fisted her pillows. That was as true as it had ever been. And with her eyes closed, he could really be there, holding her tightly.

"Why did you leave, Booth?

He considered his answer of for a while. No rush in the conversation, she knew he was pondering.

"Tit for tat Bones. I can answer that but I get to ask a question too. And I'll settle for the truth, thank you very much. I'll even tell you in advance what it is, so can have all the facts before deciding, OK?"

"OK."

"Why did you ask me to stay?"

Her chest seized and compressed her lungs to the point to malfunction.

"Tell you what, Bones. That answer can wait until you're ready, OK?"

"Ready for what?"

"Bones!" The admonition was only as long as her name. But it worked. "I'll tell you one thing, though: Some things are meant to be. It's just a matter of trial and error."

"I still don't believe in fate."

"And I still do."

In a moment of clarity Brennan realized that she had been operating under the assumption she knew herself, the places in her heart. But as with most things, a storm had gathered and reinvented her geography. Or more particularly, the soft wind that was Booth had blown across her and changed her.

Forever, it seemed. Now she just needed to find her way back home.

"Bones? What was that dog's name?"

"Ygor"

"Nice one...."

"Booth?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you be coming back soon?"

"Sleep tight, Bones. I'll stay here until you fall asleep."

Brennan lay back into the pillows and closed her eyes. This time Booth was there. She was safe.

"Good night, Booth."

.

.

Booth held on to his phone, listening to every rustle of her sheets, to each variation on the cadence of her breath. As he guarded her dreams, he slid gently into sleep. God only knew that he needed those sounds of her, those deep sighs and compassed breathing to feel himself again in the midst of the madness he had agreed himself back to.

Guarding her, he was guarding himself.


	4. Ache

**Author's note: As I was writing this chapter, I kept thinking of Sweets in The Sums of the Parts of the Whole when he just tosses his book and says**_** my book is crap**_**. Lol. This is the first chapter of this story after the finale. So now we know how it happened. Which means that this story is not cannon. So I will keep it that way and try not to hammer in the cannon ending. *sigh***

**That said, in this chapter, in particular, I have included something that Daisy said and that struck me that it had hurt Brennan and eventually, pushed her into leaving. **

**You kindered obsessed little souls will recognize it.**

**Note 2 – Thank you to the lovely MickeyBoggs for her help in reviewing this chapter.**

**And to all of you commenting, I will get around to replying to you. It's just that life was a way of getting in the way, doesn't it?**

**Be good (or bad, if you're good at it)**

**Yours **

**Jane**

Ache

She was dreaming again. The choking and the crushing weren't real. It was just a dream. A really bad dream. And Booth was going to call any minute now. He was going to call her and wake her and it would be back to reality where she could breathe and nothing hurt. Still, she choked.

He would call. Any minute now.

_Booooooth!_ Wake me up...

Any minute now.

He always called when she had bad dreams. Still, the phone did not ring and she couldn't make herself wake up. And her bones were crumbling under the weight of those walls she herself had built.

_Booooooooooooooooth!_

.

.

The call hadn't come.

She had woken up on her own.

And though she wanted to sob and cry and whine, not a sound had come from her. Awake, she was only numb.

.

.

"Brennan." There was a heart beating strong, strong, strong, hammering its presence inside her chest.

"Hi Bones!" Was he really this happy away from her? Was it the distance that put that happy lilt in his voice?

_._

_._

_"Maybe you're holding him back..."_

_._

_._

"Hi Booth." She couldn't muster the same happy tone. Once again with feeling. "Hi Booth!" Didn't make a difference, though, did it?

"What's wrong, Bones?" _What wasn't_.

"Nothing, Booth" _Liar, liar, pants on fire..._

"Then why are you so quiet?" Unsolved mystery. All she wanted to do was scream and wail and shout and sob. Be normal. Do the normal womanly thing to do. Show some emotion. Be what Booth needed her to be. Instead, there was only this awkward, inadequate thing.

She wasn't even aware that she had sighed. It was a sigh that came from the heart, from the soul, from the pit she was in. In her head there were all these things going on, all these sounds she wanted to make, all the things she wanted to say. All that she wanted to give. Inside, it all made sense. She just couldn't make herself do, say, be those things out loud. It was as if she had nothing left to say. As if the sadness that crushed her had taken all her words away. The only thing left was this strange, almost voluntary numbness. As if she'd had taken too many pain killers for the soul. It felt less bad, the pain. Too bad you just couldn't think.

"Bones? Bones, are you there?" In a movement of her brain, she forced herself to reply, to keep the phone call going, to hear his voice again.

"Yes, I'm here" Though it wasn't quite true and she wasn't used to lying to him.

"Another nightmare?" _Yeah, why not?_ At least that much was true.

"Yes."

"Tell me about it, Bones" She considered the offer for a minute. Undressing in public would be less uncomfortable. But then again, this was Booth.

"Tit for tat, Booth"

Booth smiled on the other side of the line

"That's my girl."

The moment he uttered it, he went silent. Brennan tried to swallow her heart which was in a maniac bid for freedom. Three little words and the little idiotic thing in her chest would not calm down, beating in her throat, in her fingers, in her scalp. She felt the burn of those three words. It ached. It really did, the longing she felt, the need, the utter physicality of loss.

Booth cleared his throat. Maybe he was already regretting those words. Her stomach churned out acid.

"Tell me something about where you are."

"Bones, I can't... It's... classified"

.

.

_There had been a time when Booth could have "defy authority" tattooed on his skin. He did it. When it mattered, he did it. Mostly, for her, he did it. The socks, the tie, the belt. The actions. Who he was everyday. And testament to the man he was, his rebellions were quiet. He was not the flashy type. He did not announce himself to the world. He was just there, commanding in his presence. Steady._

_He had taken on the director of the FBI. And won. Drug lords. And won. The spooks of the CIA. And won. Quietly. No shiny baubles for him._

_The Booth she used to know, the Booth who was her partner? That Booth would have found a way of telling her._

_._

_._

"Bones?"

What was it that had changed? What was it that had caused to him to follow the rules so blindly?

And why was she so upset about it? It wasn't like he owed her anything.

Quite the opposite.

"It's always the same dream, Booth." She took a deep breath. Exposure. She was exposing herself. She did not really do that. She braced herself for the discomfort. "There are brick walls all around me but it's OK. Then, I hear voices. And then I'm choking because it all collapsed on me, all those bricks and I can't breathe. And I couldn't even run, because I was distracted and I couldn't hear them falling." All her words were coming fast, tumbling from her mouth as if she couldn't stop them. Her breathing took a raspy, hiccupped quality to it, reminiscent of the suffocation she had felt in her nightmare.

"Bones, Taffet is in jail. It's over. She can't hurt you anymore. Us. She can't hurt us anymore." _Taffett?. __Right. Gravedigger. Get with the program, Brennan._

"I know..." _Stupid throat, closing in on her again._

"Bones... I still have nightmares about that boat... every once in a while." He cleared his throat. And then there was silence. Sitting in her bed, she could feel, she could see, she could all but taste his confession across the line, as surely as if he were standing right there. Sitting on her bed with her. She wanted to say something smart, and kind. What had been done of her empathy?

"I..." _I what? I still dream of that too? Every single day?_ "I'm so sorry, Booth." She wished she could reach out and touch his hand because now, words, even the best ones, just weren't sufficient. He had taught her that, sitting in that interrogation room. Because a touch was worth so much more than words. Words she didn't know how to command. "I wish you didn't have that in your memories, Booth. I wish I could wipe it away."

"Oh, Bones... You know, it's going to go away. I promise. Time heals everything."

No. Not everything.

.

.

"_A surrogate relationship wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing because then I could avoid the sting of rejection which, however fleeting... is still uncomfortable."  
__**"**__Right, okay, look, I'm sorry, you know what, if Mark and Jason don't know how lucky they are then they don't deserve you in the first place."  
__**"**__No, relationships are temporary."  
__**"**__No, that's not true Bones, you're wrong, okay? There is someone for everyone, someone you're meant to spend the rest of your life with, alright? You just have to be open enough to see it... that's all."_

_._

_._

No, time did not heal all wounds. Some of them, though they had started as hope, you just buried until they festered. Until they gave you nightmares about suffocating.

"Booth?"

"Yes, Bones?"

"I miss you."

She couldn't see it, but on the other side of the line, Booth put his hand to his heart, a sense of constriction making him feel as if he were buried under those bricks of her dream.

"Bones..." Yeah, he missed her too. More than the sanity of the world he'd left behind. More than the peace of soul he had worked so hard for and was now lost. Again. "It's really hot here... I can't tell you where I am. If I do, I won't be allowed to call you again."

Brennan let his words wash over her like a balm.

"Thank you, Booth!"

"Bones, why aren't you back to work yet?"

Her eyes were orphan sad. He knew they were though he couldn't actually see it now.

.

.

_She had tried. She had woken up and showered and gotten dressed. She had pulled random papers into her bag and her phone and her keys. She had walked down her street and hailed a cab and done all he normal things. She had sat in that back seat and given directions to the Jeffersonian. But when the car had pulled up to the visitor's entrance she had told him to keep driving. It had been a case of lost nerve, to which the visitor's entrance had only given a name: she was visiting her life, not really living it. She was a stranger to it all. And she didn't quite know how to take possession of it anymore than she knew what to do with her ragged self. _

_._

_._

"I'm not... brave enough, Booth" Her heart thumped, thumped, thumped because it had taken all her residual courage to confess. Her hand clutched at it trying to calm it down. She might have a heart beating inside her, but her soul was dead.

"Bones, you are fearless." _So not true it wasn't even funny. _"You can walk the high wire in the big top, Bones. You _are _fearless."

He was all over her, in what she did and in what she was. He was the rain to the barren field that she was. And then some. Her throat closed in on her again tight in pain. She welcomed the sensation.

"I need you to go back to the lab, Bones. Our people need you there."

Her eyes burned and stung. She felt oddly peaceful as her body gave her familiar signs of ache.

"You said you'd help me, remember, back in the beginning, you said you'd help me even things out, remember?"

"Your cosmic balance sheet."

"I need you to keep doing that, Bones." He was all over her, in what she did and what she was. But it went deeper than that, didn't it? "I| miss you Bones. I miss you so bad it hurts"

It wasn't just that he said it. It was that fracture in his voice when he said, that hint of vulnerability that finally broke through the barrier of numbness.

It took her a long time to realize that hot tears were sliding down her face, running, cascading. It took her a long time to realize the relief when that veil of numbness started to lift.

"You have such faith in me, Booth."

"I do, Bones."

"OK."

It was going to hurt. Two months away and all her vulnerabilities, all her tender spots that were her – their - family at the Jeffersonian would still be there, waiting for her.

"They're mine too, Bones. Take care of them."  
"OK." Monosyllables were all she could muster.

"Bones? Let them take care of you too."

Brennan reclined into her pillows. Perhaps if she concentrated enough, she could hold Booth's hand in hers. Even through the distance. Even through the pain in her heart. At least she felt _there._

"Sleep tight, Bones." She squeezed his remembered hand in hers one more time.

"Sleep tight, Booth."

Sometimes it was better to feel something. Even if it was an ache.

.

.

Booth hit the END button and cradled the phone in his hand.

Those walls of hers were tumbling down. Silently and terrifying her. But they were tumbling down. Crushing down on her. His finger rubbed the warm mark his ear had left on the screen. Life was such a bitch. It had taken him moving on for her to wake up. He rubbed his scalp.

These calls were both a saving grace and torture.

He had gone through all the reasons why not calling was better. Through all the reasons why he needed to call her. But when he got to use satellite time, he always called her. And all the days he couldn't, it was torture because somehow he always knew when she needed him. And it absolutely devastated him to not be there. Even if all he had needed was the distance and the time to grow a set.

Didn't quite matter that he needed space. His heart wanted none of that. His own body wanted none of that. Removing himself from her felt like an amputation everyday: though the limb was gone, it still ached, you still tried to use it and it still surprised you that the pain wasn't real.

And he'd take the ache of the distance between their two bodies over the numbness of not having her in his life.

Because these conversations, this hand holding while they were miles away? These were _them_ in a nutshell: standing half a world apart, feeling like they were standing two feet away.


	5. Air

**Author's note: I'm sorry it took me so long to update this story. I had good reason. :( Still, I'm sorry. I 'm happy that you came back to read more.**

**Also, thank you to MickeyBoggs, lovely beta, for the proofing.**

**Yours,**

**Jane  
**

Air

In the quiet night, in the still room, in the immobile moonlight coming in through the open curtains of her room, Brennan thrashed and choked, struggled and suffocated, gasped and nearly died. Those walls kept on falling on her, the bricks and mortar and sand of them covering, burying, killing her. And still the laughter outside those walls continued, innocent, free, utterly appealing.

She should be dead, so the laughter and the warmth that came from outside her crumbled walls made no sense.

Until a warm hand, attached to a strong arm, clothed in a white shirt and black suit jacket pulled her out of the unimaginable depth of sand.

Until the sound of the rustling of the sand became a voice that told her _I got you, baby._

_._

_._

"Brennan."

"Hi, Bones. Guess what?"

"What?"

"It's lunch time." Brennan looked at the clock on her bedside table. 4.47. She was pretty sure it was 4.47am. So she filed the little tidbit in her mental folder of Important Information and Relevant Facts and added one more coordinate to her map to Booth.

"I'm not hungry."

"Really?" Really. She couldn't even remember what it that felt like. Or thirst. Or exhaustion. Or any other bodily need. She took care of those needs when the clock told her to do so. She ate and drank and showered because there was no simpler maintenance deal. It wasn't like she could take herself, as she did her car, to service at a body shop or buy spares if something broke.

And she was not done waiting.

Her penance was not done yet.

"That's too bad."

"Why is that?" She couldn't remember the last time she'd been curious about the why of something.

"Well... because I just went to all this work to cook you a meal and you're not hungry..."

"Cook me a meal..." All the alarm bells were going off in her head. The words _post traumatic stress disorder_ rang wildly. As did the word _hallucination_. She had no idea what was happening with him. She had no way of knowing what he was going through. It could be bad. It could be really bad.

And that petrified her.

"Yeah... I... really slaved over this one, Bones" Her heart tightened in her chest, and her hand clutched at it of it. She was trying to work through the knot in her throat when her doorbell rang. Whoever it was could go elsewhere.

Booth was in trouble and needed her.

Booth was on the phone and even if he didn't need her, she would _never_ interrupt him for someone at her door.

"Booth... I" What could she say? What was there to say that would be kind and helpful? "I..."  
"Aren't you going to answer the door? Might be important..."

"No... I..."

"Might be food, Bones... come on, I really slaved over this one..."

_He was back. He was telling her he was back._

Clutching the phone in her hand, in a surge of energy she hadn't felt since he had left her in that departures lounge, she tossed her sheets back, her heart pounding in her ears, in her fingertips. She reached the door and for a second, for a very precious second, while she unlocked the heavy door and her hand turned the brass knob, she was opening the door to fall into Booth's open arms on the other side of the threshold, holding on to his phone.

_You know better than that!_

That little cruel voice in the back of her mind told her she knew better, but still her face face bloomed in a smile of anticipation. She could all but smell his soft scent of fresh laundry and understated aftershave.

The cruel voice became hideous laughter. Holding a pizza box on the other side of the door was a sleepy teenager. The laughter cackled louder and louder until it was all she could hear.

_Stupid._

It was just so stupid. She _should_ have know better. People did not come back to her like that, on a hope and a prayer. Not to her, they didn't. She should have known better.

She took the pizza box and commanded her feet to move and her hands to close the door and her mouth to speak.

"Pizza."

"Not just any pizza. Papa Joe's pizza. Best pizza this side of Rome!" Brennan wanted to say something. She wanted desperately to say something. Keep the conversation going. These moments were so precious.

She couldn't.

She just stood there, facing a closed door. Or any departures lounge.

"Bones?" The sound came from far away. "Bones? Are you there?" That same old chestnut. "Are you OK?" _Absolutely not._

"Yeah. It's pizza."

"Papa Joe's pizza."

.

.

Booth made an effort to keep talking through his own tactlessness, through the echo of her shattered heart. He'd had this stupid idea while he sat in the barracks waiting the night away, while he waited the heat and the mosquitoes, the nausea and the longing and the fear and the heartache away. He'd had a stupid idea and here she was again hurting. _Fidiot_.

"The best crust in the whole world, Bones. And the garlic sauce? It's the best garlic sauce _ever_."

"Smells nice."

"So I slave away to cook you this meal and _smells nice_ is the best I can get? Aw, Bones, you break my heart..." Any time now. She would say that he hadn't really cooked any time now.

Except she didn't.

.

.

Brennan held on to the box. Lovingly, she cradled it. It had taken her 15 years to open that Christmas present. She was different now. She was Booth's Bones and she would damned well open this one. These moments were precious. And she'd pull herself together and enjoy it.

.

.

_ "You gotta eat, right?"_

.

.

"So... does it look like Michael Jackson doing the Moonwalk?" Booth hummed a second of Thriller. And Brennan laughed. It was a small laughter, fragile. But it was laughter nonetheless. It was a little of his old life back. A little sanity, a little peace, and a a whole lot of heart.

"I'm still not sure of what that is."

"Oh, come on, Bones, how could you not check it out?"

"It's OK, Booth. I'm pretty sure you did a very good impersonation."

"How can you know that if you don't know who MJ is?"

"Because everything thing you do, you do it well."

.

.

It stopped him, his words, his breathing, his heart. She was just stating it. From the heart.

It felt like a very real caress.

.

.

"How about you?" He heard the rustling of the carton and a deep breath. "This smells really good."

"What about me?"

"Are you having... lunch... as well?"  
"Oh yeah. Not Papa Joe's, though..." Her hand held the slice of pizza. This was her Booth, her attentive best friend, her lover without sex, her whole family without the blood ties. She needed to share that pizza with him. "More like Private Koslowsky's. Not bad, though... considering. Come on, Bones, tuck in." She wondered if you could be embraced without really being touched.

.

.

"_A surrogate relationship is not that bad"_

_._

_._

She did. What else could it be, all those surrogate kisses and those surrogate embraces through these last five years? She tucked in. It was 5 am, but she did. She tucked into that pizza because not to would be the same as refusing him and she had learned her lesson.

The sounds of munching came to her through the line. She could not steal fries over the telephone. It felt lonely, that she could not just reach over and take one, dip it into his neat squirt of ketchup, have him slap her hand with a caress. It felt cold because she could not just reach over the table and _have_ him there.

But she did have him over the telephone, she did have a whole hot pizza because he had bothered to order it for her. Probably from half way across the world. She took the moment over the loneliness.

"Thank you, Booth."

"For what?" He spoke while he chewed. She loved that familiarity. Just like she loved that thing he did with his tongue over his lips when he ate.

"For the pizza." Or that every meal was an intimate moment.

"Special occasion, Bones." Or an intimate conversation. She took the first bite. It was indeed a good pizza. A very good pizza. She made an inquiring sound she knew he would hear as _why_. "You went back."

.

.

_She got up and dressed, made an effort with her appearance. Took the car keys. And put them down again. Grabbed her purse and the same briefcase of random papers that had accompanied her on her first attempt. She got into a cab and panicked several times during the trip in. _

_The Jeffersonian had become a house haunted by her old life._

_As she stood in the cab idling at the front entrance, she took the coward's way out: she asked the driver to take her through the parking lot. _

_She walked without casting a shadow._

_When she found herself in her office, she took a deep breath, as if she had just resurfaced from a long dive._

_Old habits, old gestures were comforting: putting on her lab coat, checking her emails, her pending files. _

_Angela brought a silent coffee and didn't linger._

_Jack brought her a sympathetic muffin and didn't dwell._

_Cam observed silently from the platform and did not interrupt her. though she was in the parking lot at 5.30 when for the first time in her career, Brennan decided to keep to office hours. Silently, companionably, Cam drove her home._

_She couldn't have hoped for a better family to be adopted into._

_._

_._

"Yeah." She sighed. "I guess I did."

"Lots of murderers to catch, Bones. You better pick up your feet." The old Jeffersonian had as many opinions as lean ins. She supposed families always did have both of those. But it would take time. Going back- even to Limbo- would take time. The space behind her computer was not so crowded with the echoes and ghosts of what used to be.

"I will, Booth." Because that's what he needed to hear. But she needed time. Mostly, she needed him.

.

.

"_My name is Brennan. Dr Temperance Brennan. I work at the the Jeffersonian Institution. I am a forensic anthropologist." She had tried. She had tried to hold it together. She had failed. "I specialize in identifying..." She had failed spectacularly. "I specialize in identifying people when no one knows who they are." She hadn't known who she was. She hadn't known her blood. "My father was a science teacher, my mother was a book keeper. My brother... I have a brother..." _

"_I know who you are."_

"_I'm Dr Temperance Brennan..." Though she had no idea who that was._

"_Hey, I know who you are." But he did. He really did. "Shh, it's gonna be alright."_

_._

_._

"Tell me about the garlic sauce, Bones." Balancing the box on her legs and and the phone between her shoulder and her ear, she broke some of the crust and dipped it in the sauce. "Tell me about it as if you were writing in your books." _Yep, another thing she had neglected. But the words had dried up inside her, all the voices were silent, all the sounds and smells muted. All that was left was a barren space where nothing came to life._

"Hum..." _Nice. Just not her thing._ "Delicious. Just the right tartness and creaminess."

"More... please."

"Velvety and... and smooth."

"You can do better than _velvety_ and _smooth_, Bones. You're a New York Times best seller... Try that sauce again." Brennan broke another piece of the crust. "No, no, no, Bones. No crust. Finger. You know, _finger lickin' good" _

Brennan dipped her finger and tried the sauce again.

"_Food heaven_?"

"You're joking, right? That's not how you sell books, Miss Sexy Scientist..."

"I told you that I don't want to be Miss Sexy Scientist."

"You better be pouting when you say that, Bones! Come on, try again." She fingered the sauce.

"How about _tangy_ and _lush_?"

"_Tangy _ and _lush_... yes..." More chewing sounds. God, she loved his sounds. The chewing, the swallowing, the slight snoring when he fell asleep on her couch... He chewed _kindly_ and swallowed _resolutely_ and snored _sweetly. _She missed all those daily sounds as she'd miss fundamental parts of her body, like a heart or a kidney or all her bone marrow. "I like that."

"I'm sorry, Booth." The words had formed and had been spoken and were true. She just didn't know how they come to pass the filter between her heart and her mouth.

"What for? You don't like the sauce after all?"

"No, not that. I'm sorry." She needed him to understand her, because he always did.

"Bones... don't do that."

"Booth... I'm sorry... for the everything. For the way I treated you. For being the way I am. For what I said." _For what I didn't say. _"I'm so sorry. You deserve so much better and I..."

"Bones, stop. Stop it. Eat your pizza."

.

.

Was it always going to be like this, Booth wondered, that he was saying something because he couldn't say what he really meant?

.

.

"By the way... how are the nightmares?"

Brennan didn't choke on the answer. She'd had too many years of emotion concealment under her belt. This was what she was good at.

"Better, thanks."

"What does that mean? Either you still have a nightmare or you don't." Silence. He couldn't see her blush but he knew her well.

.

.

He loved her sounds. All of her defeated sighs and each of her angry inhales. And he knew them all as well as her bashful blushes and her angry livid skin. Or the innocence of the blue of her eyes.

.

.

"You can do it, Bones. You can tell me" She took a stalling bite of her pizza slice. She could indeed.

"Those walls, they still bury me when they fall..."

"But..."

"But now I..." Why was she choosing her words so carefully? "Now I don't die anymore"

"What changed?"

.

.

_It wasn't so much that something had changed. It was just that, somehow, she was pushing through the panic. And the air, the unsuspected air, was there."_

_._

_._

"I get rescued." She had summoned all her courage for those words.

Booth knew that, because he knew her by heart. And he fell in love with her yet again. His heart did that a lot. It fell in love with her every day. It was second nature to him now.

It was just like breathing and he had made his peace with that. It had taken him a really stupid, dangerous move, but he had made his peace with loving Temperance Brennan

"Good morning, Bones. Go have a good day."

"Good morning, Booth."


	6. Real

**Author's note: Thank you to all you reading his story, adding it to alerts and favorites. Thank you specially to those who review- because taking time to do it is a show of kindness and consideration. I will get around to reply to those who commented the last chapter. *sigh* the last few weeks have been just a little complicated. **

**As ever, thank you to MickeyBoggs, without whom this chapter would be full of static.**

**With love**

**Jane  
**

Real

The heat came from within more than from outside. His skin pearled with tiny beads of perspiration and his chest rose and fell in his struggle to breathe. His muscles bunched under the sleek skin, his hands fisted convulsively around her hair. _Do you love me? _God, yes, he did, every single day of his damned life. _Yeah._ Easy as Sunday morning. Smile. Touch. Roll over. Kiss. Penetrate. Breathe. _I love it when you do that._ Move. Move. Back. Forth. Fast. Faster. Faster. _Ahhhhhh._

The heat was inside but it faded fast, like an echo, something missing.

Only the heat outside remained.

.

.

"Brennan." Though why she said it every time she didn't know. She knew it was _him. _She needed a new greeting.

"Hi Bones. Good morning."

"It's Saturday afternoon." She couldn't help it. She needed one more pin in her map. Voluntarily, he took the bait.

"Sunday nearly morning." _Thank you! _She took the clue and filed it away, neatly.

"Feel like breakfast, Booth?"

"Yeah. Toasted cinnamon bagels and coffee, please."

"I have the coffee if you have the bagels..."

.

.

"Yeah... I got the coffee covered. Would have been good bagels though" He took a sip of his steaming cup. Thank God for coffee machines. "I miss toasted cinnamon bagels..." More to the point: toasted cinnamon bagels for breakfast with Bones.

He leaned against the warm, deceptively clay covered wall. The sun would rise in the horizon soon.

"Talk to me about where you are, Booth."

"Bones..."

"No, just something ..." _That would shorten the distance_.

"The sky..."

"Yes, tell me about it"

"It's so close, Bones. Like you could almost reach it if you just raise your hand." One by one, the stars had lost brilliance and faded in the blue hueing into the pink of dawn. "And the stars... they're so brilliant. You can see your constellation from here." His hand rubbed at his heart absently. The dream was still vivid, the ghost of the heat still almost a furnace. He wished he could touch her. The sky, though, was closer than her hair.

.

.

There was something in his voice. A longing. Echoes. A loneliness.

"Booth?"

"Yes, Bones?" She wanted to say something. Something nice and kind. Something that would reach out and touch him. Some combination of words that would sooth him the way he had soothed her. Something out of character for her.

.

.

_She liked that closed little room, those protective walls. Inside it was safe. Outside it was confusing and hurtful. But those voices and that laughter outside were utterly appealing. And the more they appealed to her, the more she reinforced those walls. The clearer the laughter became, the more bricks she piled. The louder the voices became, the more she recoiled into a corner. _

_There was no announcing catastrophe. Without a sound, or so much as rumor, those carefully built and reinforced walls came tumbling down, burying her._

_Her mouth filled with sand. Her eyes closed off the dust and she took her last breath. She fought it. Of course she did. She thrashed and kicked. But how do you defeat tons of sand burying you?_

_A hand, a warm, familiar hand grabbed hers and pulled her out of the debris._

"_I've got you baby."_

_Out of the dark and closed in and suffocating and into the fresh and new and bright._

"_Shh, I got you baby. It's gonna be alright."_

_The hand came with strong a beating heart. She leaned against that heart. She could only believe it._

.

.

"Let me hold you, Booth."

"Because that's what partners do?"

"No... Because I want to." _Need to. _"Will you let me?"

.

.

She was small and fragile. She didn't need him weighing her down. But man, wouldn't that feel good if, for once, just this once, he could just hold her to him and lean his weary head on her shoulder and just let her run her hands through his hair, say soothing things. Make it all better.

"Bones... I..."

"I'm your girl, Booth. Let me hold you."

"How?" Mom's kiss on his scraped knees and cut fingers never had felt this good.

.

.

"Close your eyes" She closed hers in tandem. "Take a deep breath," she coached, breathing in with him, the soft sound, music in his heart. _I love you. _"Trust me." She wanted to qualify that insidious little thought. _I love you in a atta-boy kind of way _or_ I love you like a brother. _It just wasn't true. The unspoken words rattled her. "Shh, I've got you. It's gonna be OK."

.

.

_Was it?_ He knew all his problems like the times table. He had them organized and indexed in his mind. Mostly, they were things that you learned to live with, like a callus, because whatever you can't work out, you need to work around. But for the last month or so, he'd been having that unsettling dream, and the dream was becoming more vivid and that echo more resonant.

It was the old familiar instinct of a truth poorly told and a lie just waiting to be uncovered.

And it burned in his chest. It grated at his nerves until it had come to a point that it seemed to consume his whole body.

"Yeah, you got me." _North and south, east and west._ "Bones?"  
"Yeah?"

"This feels good." He sighed from deep in his heart.

"Yeah, it does." He was still OK with her silences and it was comforting. "What's bothering you?"

"Nothing much."

"I'll settle for the truth, thank you very much!" Booth chuckled. He loved that about her, that feisty way of returning his words to him. Though how was he supposed to just come out and say it?

"I've been having this dream... lately... and..." He took a deep breath. Making his peace with a fact did not mean you had to enjoy putting your nuts on the block and having them handed out to you. Even gently. "And it's like I'm missing something."  
"What are you missing?"

"I don't know."  
"Is it a nightmare?" _Far from it. _

"No..." Deep breath. The enemy outside the barracks had nothing on this. _Can't do it. _"Bones, why did you ask me to stay?"

"Why did you leave?"

"Bones..."

.

.

She sat in the dark room of the end of the afternoon, the open window letting in the spoils of the day. She had asked him to stay out of despair, really. Because she did not deal with change well, because she was tired of losing people, because he was the most important thing the whole wide world. Because, yes, she loved him. And yet, none of those were the real _why._

.

.

_ "Do you love me?"_

_ "Yes... Do you want me to prove it to you?"_

.

.

No. They were all good reasons. But really, the distance she was used to keeping between them was never more than that of a different address. This, this move of his, that had the tone, the weight of an amputation. And asking him to stay had been as close as she had dared coming to _please don't dump me. _

The closest thing to_ Don't forget me all over again._

.

.

_"Who are you?"_

.

.

"Bones? Are you there?"

"I needed you to stay. I need you to come back too..." She took a deep breath. The tears forming had no place in this conversation because she was no pathetic helpless female. She pushed past the knot in her throat to find the courage she needed. "Because I'm selfish."  
"Bones, no, don't_" She cut him off short.

"Don't, Booth, I'm not I'm going to be able to say it if you're nice to me. I just wanted you here because I wanted, well, want... need... crave, I think, this connection between us. Because if you left... if you stay away, I'm going to lose you. I can take it, you moving on, I can take it, you finding someone who deserves you. But not the absence..." She took a few ragged breaths, as if she had just run 20 miles on a sprint. The worst was over. Now, it was just smooth sailing. _Because I love you._ "You are the most important person in my life." _Because I Love you. _ "The standard." _I love you. _"I was selfish. I didn't want to be." _ love you. _ "And a coward, a chick."

.

.

"A chicken." He corrected her automatically. "You mean you were a chicken." And there it was again, that feeling that there was something that was escaping him. "Why do you say that?"

"Because when you didn't remember..." She was on the verge of tears. He could feel the heat radiating from the effort of keeping those inside. "When you didn't remember..." _Oh God._

"When I didn't remember?"

"When I couldn't make you remember... You staying... that's as good as it gets."

.

.

"_Do you love me?"_

_._

_._

"Why did you leave, Booth?" The thing with Bones was her courage. There was more courage in that revelation of hers than any of his men- or him- had shown in the last three months. _Do you love me? _It just pounded and pounded and pounded relentlessly in his brain, in his heart, in his muscles like it wanted to come out of the dream and make a jump into the real here and real now. _Do you love me? Do you love me. _"Do you love me?" It surprised him that he said it out loud, that his thoughts had gained such strength that they escaped the confines of the silence inside him to gain body and substance over the line of the telephone. "Do you love me?" he repeated. It was not so much a question to her. It was that the echo of them was so loud that he had failed to see the difference between the inside of his mind and the ether of the telephone line.

"Yes." Though he could not be sure he had heard it.

"Yes?" _Idiot._

"Yes." His stomach was flattened against his bladder and pressed there as if it wanted to find a away to his tired boots. "But you don't remember." And _those_ words he would remember until his last breath

.

.

_ "When you love someone, you open yourself up to suffering. That's the sad truth. Maybe they'll break your heart. Maybe you'll break theirs and never be able to look at yourself the same way. Those are the risks. That's the burden."_

_Booth's diagnosis had weighed more over her than if it had been her own. A catastrophe without warning, not even a hint. She had struggled more than she would have if the thing had been growing inside her head. The fear had been far greater. She had tried and tried to argue the point with the doctor. She had searched and asked and begged and negotiated help with god and his neighbor. When nothing but the promise of a second opinion had come out of it, she had, in her defeat, done the only thing she had ever been certain of in her life: she had raced to Booth's apartment, taken the spare key out of its hidey-hole and let herself in._

_He slept peacefully, wrapped in the warm light of a nightstand. _

_His sniper senses had alerted him to her presence in the room. She went to him trailing shoes and skirt, with an ease she guessed was common between lovers. Something she had never had with anyone._

_The clarity of impending loss overcame her own lines and barriers. The brown warmness of his eyes an invitation to the truth she had never before experienced. _Do you love me? _The answer had come clear of subterfuge, quickly true. _Yes._ He held her face in his hands because the proof was in his eyes. _Do you want me to prove it to you? _She didn't need it, she didn't need any proof. His hands cupping her face were all the evidence she needed._ If you're not too tired. _All traces of sleep had vanished from his eyes, the fog of rest replaced by a vivid spark of promise, beautiful lines of laughter and happiness radiating his eyes. Has he rolled over her, she could only hold on to him, grab hold of his skin, his muscles, his bones to ground herself to the reality of that precious moment. When his hand slid under her she held her breath, anticipating the invasion, delighting in the promise. When he took her, when he made her his, she released her breath in a gasp of the purest undiluted joy. _

_Realization struck: this was her own miracle of singularity. Nothing else mattered._

_In five days almost to the hour, though, he had woken up from her biggest nightmare. And a new one had started. _

Who are you?

_ "Like wings, they have weight. We feel that weight on our backs. But they are a burden that lifts us, burdens that allow us to fly."_

_._

_._

Sometimes, she thought he couldn't remember. Others, that he wouldn't. Hope in her had always been a candle in the wind. When either way he didn't, she'd taken the first flight out. Chicken shit that she was. Turned out Guatemala was as good a place to be as any. Dead people were everywhere.

"I realize now that I always run."

"What?"

"Whenever things get... too big. I run. It's what I do. I'm so sorry, Booth. I'm such a coward."

.

.

_Do you love me? _"It was real?" _Do you want me to prove it to you? _"It was real?" _If you're not too tired._

His head was killing him, spinning, twirling, skidding on thoughts and fragments of dreams and memories that were not really there to be had. _Was it real? _

The sky had pinked for dawn and the stars had, one by one, faded. The sun had traveled enough to cast light over the dark landscape.

All those things, though did not register. One single thought consumed him. One single _It was real _that

revolved around and around the woman in his arms, the woman that kissed him, the woman under him. Next to him rolling into the OR, fiercely holding his hand. _It was real._

He did not see it coming, there was no instinct warning, no sounds from comrades in arms, not a single sound except the shot that reverberated through the crisp, clean air of the morning.

Catastrophes, it seemed, were always silent.

_It was real?_


	7. Perspective

**Author's note: Thank you. Thank you to everyone for the reception to this story. Thank you for the nice things you say. Thank you to MickeyBoggs for her help. Thank you.**

**With love**

**Jane**

**.**

**.**

Perspective

"This is Dr. Brennan with the Jeffersonian Institute. I'm a forensic anthropologist. I work directly with the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI. My clearance level is_"

"Please hold." The voice was standard operator upbeat with a hint of boredom and it seemed to have all time in the world to practice _annoy your caller to death_ today.

"No, no, no, I don't want to wait_"

"I'll put you through to the Liaison Department." She would kill her. She would find out who that woman was and she would kill her with her bare hands.

"NO! I don't want to be put through to anyone else. I want to know where my partner is. I want to know what's happening with Seeley Booth, Special Agent Seeley Booth... Master Sergeant Booth.

"Ma'am, I need to put you through now. Don't know who that person is_" Her heart was pounding, thumping, seizing.

"Seeley Booth. His name is Seeley Booth. I need to know what's happening_"  
"Ma'am," She woman's voice lost the artificial chirpiness to it for a second. "I'll put you through."

"Thank you" There was defeat in Brennan's voice. "Please..." _Please_ what? Find him for me?

.

.

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

_._

_._

"You have reached the Liaison Department, Trudy here, how can I assist you today?" Again with the chirpy happy voice. Brennan let out a silent scream that drowned it out.

"My name is Dr. Brennan with the Jeffersonian Institute. I'm a forensic anthropologist. I work directly with the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI and my_"  
"Good morning, Dr. Brennan. How can help you today?"

"I want to know where my partner is."

"Ma'am?"

"I want to know what's happening with Master Sergeant Booth. I want you to tell me where he is and that he is OK."

"Ma'am, I'm not sure I understand..."

"My partner. Seeley Booth is my partner. I need to know that he is OK. I need a phone number for him, I need to talk to him _now. _I need_"

"Ma'am, you're quite agitated. You need to calm down. Can have his name and rank?"

"Booth, Seeley Joseph Booth, Master Sergeant."

"Thank you ma'am". Quick typing sounds on the other side.

"Can you please confirm the date of birth for me."

One by one, she answered all the security questions. One by one, spelling, repeating, spelling again. Her nails dug little crevices in her palms as she struggled against the fear and the rage and helplessness.

"Ma'am, I'm very sorry, but there's no record of a Master Sergeant Booth."

"Then try Seeley Booth."

"Ma'am, there are parameters to this search."

"Try Booth."

"Ma'am, please!"

"Stop calling me _ma'am_"

.

.

"_My name is Temperance Brennan."_

"_Shh, It's OK, I know who you are."_

_._

_._

"Ma'am, You need to calm down."

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"Look, OK. OK, I'm calm." Deep breath. "Please. He was deployed in the Middle East. I'm not sure where. But it must be important. Because it is classified information. But I need to find him. I... need to find him."

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"Ma'am... Can I check the spelling of the surname again, please?" _Olive branch._

_._

_._

"_Do you love me?"_

"_Yes. Do you want me to prove it to you?"_

"_Yes."_

.

.

"Ma'am?"

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"Ma'am, are you there?"

"Yes. Sorry. Yes."

"Ma'am, I can't find any records. Nothing's showing for _Booth." _Her stomach froze and her lungs tightened, her throat closed painfully. Why would anyone call this a heart ache if all her body agonized?

"Please?" It was a sob slash hiccup. She wasn't used to asking. She was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. She was learning a brand new skill: begging.

"Look, I'll try central records. I need to put you on hold"  
"No, plea_" Ode to Joy in digital rendition. Did the irony strike only her or anyone else?

.

.

"_I want you all to know that, statistically, he should be fine."_

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"_...statistically, he should be fine."_

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

_A blink of an eye. A short, unremarkable blink and all that was certain and good in her life could be just... gone. A blink of an eye, a whoosh and a thump. Barely noticeable. Booth's sharp inhale. She was left with an echo _It was real, _and then only silence. The fabric of her life hung on the static of the line._

"_Booth! Come on, Booth. COME. ON. BOOTH."_

_Dead line._

_The fabric frayed. The mere thought of that made her panic come back full force, her palms getting sweaty, her heart not so much beating as flipping out in her chest._

_Blood in her hands. She held them to her midsection and rung them. Blood on her hands._

_._

_._

"Ma'am?"

"Yes. Yes. I'm here"

"Ma'am, Sergeant Major Booth_"  
"Master Sergeant Booth. You meant Master Sergeant Booth."

"No, Ma'am, Sergeant Major Booth." _You were really good at being a soldier _"Ma'am, all information about this individual is classified. I regret, but I cannot provide any information."

"My clearance level is_"

"Ma'am, I cannot access the information from this terminal. _My_ clearance level does not allow this." There was compassion yet finality to tone in the woman's voice.

"Please..." Even to her it sounded like pathetic mewling.

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

She tried to break through the nausea and the constriction in her lungs. The effort of pulling herself together was physical, and a thin sheen of perspiration covered her forehead. _One foot in front of the other. One. Foot. In. Front. Of. The. Other. _

"Please..." There had to be a combination of words that would unlock this door. Right now, the task seemed impossible.

"Look... Let me try something, OK?" _Yes, please. _"Ma'am, I need to put you on hold, OK..."

_One. Foot. In. Front. Of. The. Other. _Sometimes, the only thing that gets you through hell is that you're in too deep to pull out.

.

.

"_Look, if I die I want you to do me a favor."_

"_You will, Booth. It's inevitable."_

"_Whatever. When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

"_I'll feel foolish knowing you can't hear me."_

"_Promise!"_

"_I promise."_

"_Hey, there you go! Hey, you've agreed. I didn't think you'd agree! Why did you agree?"_

"_I believe that if I pretended you were still here, I'd feel better for a moment. And speaking to you would require me to, figuratively, look at me through your eyes, again, temporarily, and I think that would make me live my life more successfully."  
"You know what, Bones, that's the best thing anyone as ever said about me."_

"_I'll say it at your wake!"_

"_Just make sure when they put me in the ground, I'm dead."_

"_No problem!"_

.

.

Of all the ways she could have already lost him, there had been people and bullets and boats and coffins and brain cells and anesthetics. There had been him and her and their memories that did not match. Somehow, none had seemed as real as this. Not even when he had died in her arms. Not even when she had gone to bury him and her heart in the cold ground of a DC cemetery. No. This was him away from her, where she could not hold him and tell him all was going to be OK. This was him far from her reach, all her bad dreams combined. This was hell.

And she knew. She knew because she'd been there before: and she'd been holding on to the souvenirs of that time. Except that then she'd been able to step out of herself and be a good little robot that went to work and did productive things.

This time, she was outside her crumbled walls.

_I've got you baby!_

She sent out her thoughts to him.

.

.

"_When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

.

.

She sent out beacon thoughts. Short simple thoughts, because maybe he could listen to her and maybe, just maybe, she could reach him and maybe, just maybe he would tell her it was going to OK and not to worry. Maybe, just maybe, she could show him the way back to her.

.

.

"Ma'am?"

"Yes? Yes, my name is Temperance Brennan with the Jeffersonian Institute. I'm a forensic anthropologist. I work directly with the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI. My clearance level is_"

"Colonel Pelant, Ma'am, at your service. With all due respect, though, Ma'am, your FBI clearance level does not mean anything to the US Rangers." The air was sucked out of her.

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"My clearance level is not issued by the FBI but by the Department of State. Please... I just need to know. Master Sergeant Booth. Sergeant Major Booth..."

"Nonetheless, ma'am, that information is classified."

"He's my partner. I need to know."  
"Your... _partner _is serving our country."

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

It was obscenity of the expression. S_erving the country_. Taking a bullet. Those terms did not equate similar concepts.

"My partner has served his country before."

"So I heard. Listen, Dr. Temperance Brennan. Just because you have a feeling or because you had a bad dream does not mean that anything is wrong. Bad news travel fast. You would have known already if anything was wrong."

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"_When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

"I was on the phone with him when something happened. Don't tell me bad news travels fast. Don't you dare. I want to know where he is, I want to know that he's OK and I want you to tell me that now."

.

.

_That's what partners do._

_._

_._

She wished she could believe in some sort of god. She wished she could pray. Not to, it was just so lonely.

"Ma'am. This information is classified."

"Stop saying that! Colonel Pelant, please."

"Look_"

"No, you _look_. Booth has been my partner for 5 years. We've had each other's back for those 5 years. Please! You should know what that means."

.

.

_Walls protected. Silence soothed. But the voices and the laughter were all that she wanted to know- and was afraid to even try. And the more they tempted her, the more she reinforced those walls, brick by boring brick. The clearer the laughter became, the more bricks she piled. The louder the voices became, the more she stood still. The clearer the sounds outside, the more she resisted change._

"_Bones!" She pretended she couldn't hear. "Hey Bones, I know you're in there." And, just like that, those walls she'd built, they tumbled, crashed and buried her. There was no announcing disaster. Not even a sound._

_She debated, she thrashed, the struggled. All the while she knew it was a lost battle. With every grain of sand, with every speck of dust she had known this was the end. _

_Because this time, no warm hand grabbed her to pull her out of the rubble of her safety and into the fresh air. This time, there was no voice whispering quietly in her ear _I've got you baby.

_This time there was no beating heart to lean against and believe that everything was going to be alright._

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

_This time, there was only blood drying in her hands as she lay dead under the bricks of her walls._

"_Booth! Come on, Booth! COME ON!"_

"_When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

_._

_._

"Dr. Brennan?"

"Yes?" Suddenly, she didn't want to hear what he had to say. Her stomach was tight a fist, and the fear was fierce as teeth.

"Dr. Brennan, the information available is for the next of kin only. I'm sorry, but as far as I'm aware, you're not related to Sergeant Major Booth..." There was silence. He pitied her. That Colonel whatever his name was pitied her because she was nothing sufficient to Booth to get a simple bit of information. Whatever lay between them was insufficient for the Colonel to even tell her if Booth was alive. "Your relationship to Sergeant Major Booth is only a professional one." _No. No. No. Come on, Booth. COME ON!_

"No." The words were barely audible.

"No?" Pelant gave her time to fill the blanks. But Brennan was a vacant space. What was there between her and Booth was not significant to others. The way he_

"He knows me. No one else does. Not what I like and what my story is. He _knows me, _he knows what I feel and what I'm going to feel even before I do."

"Dr. Brennan... that really is not sufficient. There is no evidence... It's wonderful, but... you're not family."

"_Tell him, Bones. Tell him!"_

"There's more than one type of family, Colonel."

"Again, Dr. Brennan, that is not really enough. If at least you were... intimate..."

"Intimate?"

"You know, boyfriend, girlfriend bonds. Engaged. Lovers... You know, intimate..." Again that silence from Pelant like he was waiting for her to fill the blanks.

"_Well, Bones? Are we?"_

"Yes." _It was real? _"Yes, we are intimate." _Do you love me?_

"_Do you love me, Bones?"_

"Yes." Her voice was coming short and shallow. She answered both Pelant and Booth

"You are listed as Sergeant Major Booth's medical proxy." Why was there surprise in his voice? The translucent Booth across the distance smiled impishly. She loved that smile too.

"I am..."

"Ma'am, I regret to inform that we have intelligence of disturbance in the area where your... uh... where Sergeant Major Booth is deployed...

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"_Booth! Come on, Booth! COME ON!"_

"_When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

... the situation is not controlled yet. Ma'am we are aware of causalities and we're trying to get in. They are surrounded by hostiles and we cannot get through to them. The situation is volatile. We're trying...

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Static on the line. Dead line._

"_Booth! Come on, Booth! COME ON!"_

"_When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

"Thank you, Colonel... "

"Ma'am_" Pelant, she was sure, droned on. She just couldn't hear him. She dropped the phone and tumbled, a crumpled mess, on the floor.

"Aw, Booth..." The translucent Booth regarded her with that silly smile that annoyed her so much. That smile she missed and loved so much.

When she had decided to leave Washington, she had done so in the certainty that distance would give her perspective and objectivity. And god only knew she needed that because the fabric of her life, which had never been pretty anyway, was all tied up in knots and loose frayed ends that was not good to anyone. She was hurt and she hurt people around her. She hurt Booth more than anyone else. She had needed the perspective of seeing her life from the place it was before Booth had barged into her life 6 years before.

But time and distance had distilled in her feeling and memories from times together and those two fatal months before he had ended up leaving her in that departures lounge. Instead of time dissolving those memories and those feelings, what she remembered, what she felt was clearer, stronger, headier. Much like a vodka or whiskey strengthening over time.

"_Booth! Come on, Booth! COME ON!"_

"_When I inevitably fall dead before you do, I'd like you to come out and spend some time and talk to me every once in a while."_

"Aw, Booth. I've already missed so much because I was afraid to miss it..."

"_And now?"_

He had burrowed right into her cold heart and settled there. _ Perspective? _His warmth and grace, a fire that had thawed her soul out.

"Now you get what you asked for. I'm sitting here talking to you..." Didn't even feel ridiculous.

_Perspective._

"You're in everything I do now."

"_It's late, Bones. Sleep tight."_

"Please don't go, Booth."

"_Sleep tight, Bones. Don't let the bed bugs bite."_


	8. Promise

**Author's note: Thank you to MickeyBoggs, sweet, sweet beta. **

**Thank you to all of you who read. To all who comment. **

**Jane**

**.**

Promise

.

.

.

Silence.

Silence was good.

Except for the buzzing.

That damned persistent buzzing.

It was the only silence you got once the bullets stopped.

.

.

_The sky so blue turning pink for dawn. The stars so close they were still sort of there when the night blue broke and pinked. Silent night. _It was real? _It buzzed and buzzed and buzzed until all else faded. The silence louder than a scream. _

_A sharpness entered his body. He couldn't tell, not for sure, what it was, where it hit. _It was real? _Heart. It hit his heart. _

_._

_._

"Yo, pretty boy! You awake?" _It was real?_

.

.

_There was no pain. Only his heart. His heart had imploded. What a stupid thought to have: that implosion was a reversed orgasm- the white searing heat, the stars, the release- all turned inside, all collapsing onto themselves. No happiness. Only consternation and shock._

_._

_._

"Yo, Pretty Boy, you better stay alive, you read me?"_ You should answer. _He wanted to say something. He just didn't quite know what. And his throat refused so much as a croak. "I shit you not, man, I ain't sending no more boxes home. I'm running out of flags to cover those damned boxes."

.

.

"_Come on, Booth. Come on!" _

_The heat came from within more than from outside. Skin pearled with tiny beads of perspiration and chest rising and falling in the struggle to breathe. Muscles bunching under the sleek skin, hands fisted convulsively around her hair. _Do you love me? _God, yes, I do, every single day of my damned life._ Yeah. _E__asy as Sunday morning. Smile. Touch. Roll over. Kiss. Penetrate. Breathe_. I love it when you do that. _Move. Move. Back. Forth. Fast. Faster. Faster. _Ahhhhhh.

"_Come on, Booth! Come on!"_

It was real. _Oh, God, it was real._

_._

_._

"Shit, my man, you look like a sieve. And now it's up to me to patch your sorry ass." Good thing there was no pain. There was only so much of that you could take. Right about then, that pain in his heart? That was his absolute limit. No pain was good. No pain was real good. Though he deserved it. The pain. God, he deserved it.

"_Close your eyes. Take a deep breath," She breathed in with him. And God, he loved that sound. He lived for it. "Trust me." _And yet, he hadn't known, he hadn't been able to tell, that it had been real._ "Shh, I've got you. It's gonna be OK." _He had walked away from her standing right there.

He deserved the pain. He actively sought it.

"Good. You stay with me, Pretty Boy. You stay with me and we'll send you home to your girl, you hear?" _Yes._

_Yes._

"Yes"

.

.

The pain had seeped in. Thorough, relentless, omnipresent. Welcome.

.

.

_What scared him the most was the silence that came on the heels of the muted whooshes. The guys. His guys. His kids. One more kind of family. He wasn't the only one coming outside. Some came for a smoke. Others for the fresh air. Ryan Leone came to draw the landscape. He was barely Sweets' age. Fresh face, soft hands. And now he lay dead against the clay wall, a small trickle of blood running down his forehead. He pulled the kid to him and tried to feel for a pulse, eternal fucking optimist that he was. Softly, he tried cajoling the kid to move. Except, for all the talent, Leone had always been a stubborn little prick. There was no moving. _

_He sat and listened. _It was real...

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence._

_Soft steps in the shadows of what lingered of the night. _It was real.

_How? How could he not remember?_

_Whoosh. Thump. Sharp inhale. Silence. Soft steps. _

_There was a trail of blood from where his phone lay abandoned. His blood. It was his blood seeping slowly out of him into the greedy sand. Air. He had needed air. Instead, all he had got was a whoosh and a thump that had knocked him flat, that had exhausted what little air he had in him. _

_He looked at the fading stars. _

It was real?

.

.

"You listen to me now, OK? This is gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt but you're gonna stay focused, OK, Pretty Boy? Focus!"

He was going to answer. But the heat radiated from his chest, fast, fast, fast and it became white light, unbearable, heavy, pulling him under.

"Focus!"

He did. He focused. _Come on, Booth. Come on! _He focused on the blue eyes and the soft brown locks that were not really there. _It was real, _more real than the ripping and tearing and burning on his flesh. More real than the obliterating pain all over him.

Sticks and stones...

.

.

"We're losing men every day. Men who wouldn't have to die if you trained them. Your country needs you."

_He couldn't care less. He had done his duty. He had done his duty several times over. Several lives over. _"Heads do funny things when you shoot at them."_ He knew that because he had served his country. No one should have to know that._

_He would have paid not to get into the fray. But now he was in the thick of it. Now he knew these boys he had been asked to train. And these boys were dying while they were drawing stars in the light of dawn. He pulled his limp body through the sand and grabbed Leone's rifle._

_His training took over the dizziness, his heart over his body and he took shelter, a trail of his blood on some other country's sand. _

_His arm extended, his eyes focused, his finger waited for the right opportunity. _

_Shot._

_Shot._

_Shot._

_4.6 seconds to end three lives. To save, perhaps, many others. Sweat broke. He would have to start again. He would have to work that balance sheet with the man upstairs. 4.6 seconds to destroy what had taken years to achieve._

_Bones would be there for him. She would, because that's what partners do. Because she, god help her, loved him. Or had, some time ago, loved him. Before he forgot. Maybe he could bring that back. He just needed to get out of this alive. Even if just to tell her "I'm sorry" because it had been real._

_He crawled through the sand while somebody else took over the enemy guns that had fallen. He crawled in the still cold light and sounded the alarm. In the breaking dawn, shadows moved, so many, so angry and circled them, trapped them. _

_Again his eyes focused on the moving shadows. Again his arm extended and held steady though his muscles wanted to tremble in the absence of blood and oxygen. Again his finger depressed the trigger. His missed his bull's-eye. He was hit again and again until he went down like an empty sack._

Come on, Booth! Come on!

.

.

"Don't wuss out on me, now, Pretty Boy. Nearly done. Nearly done. Let's send you back t your girl with a pulse. Alright?"

.

.

"_Close your eyes. Take a deep breath," She breathed in with him. And God, he loved that sound. He lived for it. "Trust me." _I do._ "Shh, I've got you. It's gonna be OK." He held the weapon again. Took heart. Took aim. And shot. Shot for a hole in the wall surrounding the base. Shot for a way out for his team, his boys. For a way in for friendlies. He just shot his way home to Bones._

_._

_._

Silence.

Silence was good.

And the pain was gone.

_It felt so real._

_It was just a dream._

"Bones..."

"_Shh, I've got you. It's gonna be OK."_

_I'm sorry, Bones._

"Yo, Pretty Boy, you awake!"

He nodded. The simple gesture exhausted him. The doctor walked around his bed, sure, agile footsteps, green army fatigues under a white coat.

"You heroes are a pain in the ass, you know? I don't like heroes. You get your asses full of lead being all heroic and shit and I get to patch you up. I should have taken up embroidery while my momma could teach me." He removed bandages and made notes, replaced them, shot more morphine into the IV. "Would have been a better patching up job if I had."

The doctor was a tall man. He was still tall when he sat down on a folding chair next to the bed.

"The two kids you brought back? One is gonna make it. Maybe. The other is in a box, ready to go home to his momma."

.

.

"_Your country needs you."_

.

.

He stared at the ceiling for minutes, for hours, for days.

Alone.

Paralyzed by grief.

Men don't cry. So he didn't.

.

.

"Yo, Pretty Boy, do I look like your secretary?"

Booth kept his eyes on the ceiling. Like clouds, he could have seen whatever illusions he chose. He chose to see none.

"Yo, answer this." The doctor handed him a cell phone. "And then get your own damned phone." Booth made no effort to reach the phone. He'd rather mourn. Mourn his boys and himself. So much loss.

"Hold on!" The doctor spoke to the phone, hit the loudspeaker key and set the phone on the white sheet next to Booth's ear. "I am not your damned secretary, Pretty Boy! Do your own talking!" And he walked out of the room.

"Booth?"

A wave of something pumped through his blood, fast, hot, furious, bringing him back to life.

Love.

Peace.

Relief.

"Booth, are you there?"

It was the morphine, surely, because men don't cry. But tears, more than a handful of them, escaped the reduced space of his ceiling-staring eyes, slid down his cheeks and pooled, one by one, on the pristine white sheet under him.

_Shh, I've got you. It's gonna be OK._

"Bones."

"I've got you, now, Booth. It's gonna be OK!"

He turned on his side as if he had curled himself around her, bringing her into him. Inside him.

"Promise"

"I do. It's going to be OK. I promise."

He let her breathless words wash over him. It was real, after all.

All of it.


	9. Tin

**Author's note: Dear friends. It's been so very long. I'm so sorry to have kept waiting. I'm not going to blame the muse. I'm blaming life. And then the little problem that, the more time went by, the more I seemed to have lost my voice. It took some time and I'm not sure I'm back. Think of our Booth after the operation. He was back, but with a few glitches. I'm working on it. **

**Anyway.**

**.**

**Note 2: Thank you to MickeyBoggs for the betaing. For being so fast. And nice.**

**.**

**Note 3: Thank you to Robin Hoodlum for the nudge. Sometimes, that's what it takes to push out of your ass and into the moving position.**

**.**

**Note 4- Thank you all to those of you who reviewed the last chapter. I never got to reply. So sorry.**

**With love to you all.**

**Jane**

.

Tin

_The yellow brick road under his feet was dusty and cold and lonely. He couldn't remember how he got there but wherever he looked, there was only desert sand around him, only heat rising from it, making breathing impossible. Behind him, where the road disappeared into it's beginning, a dark battle field, heavy with rain, pregnant with the suffering of the ones he hadn't brought back. And it was just so difficult to breath, as if the air itself were sand inside him. _

_Confused, he looked around. He had no idea where he was going. Only that he had to move away from the cloud. His feet were heavy and his rifle hung from his exhausted hand. He took the first chair he saw and with the chair, came a table and with the table came the cards and suddenly the air wasn't quite so thick and his feet could take a rest and it was as if respite had suddenly decided to find him. _

_As he was given his first hand of cards, as he arranged them carefully in his hand, even as he felt the first rush of blood to the head with his first win, his limbs, became metal, a shiny cold tin._

_It scared him, but if that was the going rate for air he could breathe, he would pay. No questions asked. _

_He wasn't quite sure how long he sat there, but suddenly, his hands were faded, used up, rusty metal. Inside his chest there was no rumble of activity. He was pretty sure he'd once had a heart. Somehow, it seemed to be missing. And he couldn't quite remember where he had put it. _

_He looked at the rifle in his hand. He clung on to it for company, out of habit. Even a man made of tin needed a road companion. On his tin arm, he could count the upright little scratches, crossed at intervals of four with a fifth perpendicular one. He didn't need to count. There 10 little sets of those. They were heavy on his skin, ever present, no matter how many hands of cards he played, how many times he won or how many times he lost._

_So he got up, the rust in his tin body making it so, so difficult and he walked away._

.

.

Booth held the shiny new cell phone in his hand like a life line. As far as objects went, this one was a magic little thing. If he had been asked to describe it, he wouldn't have been able to say any thing more than it was his own little miracle. And he was past believing in miracles. Long past.

When it hummed softly in his hands, his bruised heart cranked and stuttered like an old engine coming back to life.

"Bones!" The sound barely made it out of his throat, unaccustomed as it was to speech. His days were spent in silence. He supposed Sweets would call it a penitent silence, but he just did not feel like talking. Even now. Even to her. He just wanted to listen.

"Booth."

_It was real?_

"Bones." He wanted to go on. Tell her how he missed her. How sorry he was. How devastatingly sorry he was. He could not find the words in his mind. Instead, a solitary tear pooled at his heart, at his eyes and made a silent way down the pasty hollow of his cheekbone.

"I've got you now, Booth. I've got you. It's going to be OK."

_You can't know that. _How could she?

"Booth, listen. We'll get you home."

Home felt a very long, long way away. Another life, another universe.

_It was real?_

"OK."

.

.

He was good with the lies. He had woven a delicate thread of them. They made him selfassured and resolved. An alpha that dispensed emotional advice like a pro. _Go Booth! _He was a life coach with a rotten spot in him. And no one knew but him and the poker chip he kept in his pocket. When things got messy, complicated he pinched it softly in his pocket and reminded himself he had a façade to keep up. He was Special Agent Seeley Booth.

_Special my ass._

"Thank you, Bones."

"Booth... It's just a phone."

"No Bones, it's not." _No. It was a life line. It was a shiny ghost of what once was. _

"How are you Booth?"

"I'm fine, Bones."

_Liar, liar, pants on fucking fire._

The malefic child sang in its sing song voice. All his ghosts sang to him in an evil child's voice though some were as as old as dust. He looked at the steady drip drip drip of the morphine standing next to him in an IV pole.

"Bull, Booth." He almost smiled. Half to himself, half to the morphine slowly taking over him.

"What was that, Bones?"

"Don't lie to me, Booth."

"Bones..." God, he felt tired. "I'm not lying, Bones. I'm fine. Nothing hurts."

_Well, that's not quite true, is it, now? _

"I'm not talking about your body Booth. Though I could."

"Then what are you talking about?" Though he wished she would not go _there. Please god, let her not go there. _

"Booth!" He wanted to snap to attention. He wanted to be a better liar. The malefic child's laughter cackled with glee.

"Drop it, Bones."

"No!"

He wanted to stop her. She had gotten the phone to him. Clearly, she knew all that had gone down that day. And god as his witness, he was not going to talk about it. Or about any of the _other stuff _before. He couldn't think. He just couldn't think. He didn't even know how to start about that night of theirs. Or had it been a day? He didn't know how to say it, or even what to say. The malefic child laughed again. _Who's the coward now?_

_._

.

He was the master of lies. Special Agent Seeley Booth. That was why he could spot other liars. Birds of a feather and all that. But he just couldn't organize himself to do it now. Maybe later.

"How's work, Bones?"

"I don't want to talk about work. I went back. You should be happy. I'm sure Cam or Hacker or whoever you asked to keep an eye on me has told you all about it. I want to talk about you. What happened. I want you to tell me.

"Nothing happened, Bones. It's a war, that's all. Leave it."  
"Booth!"

"I'm serious, Bones!"

"So am I."

He lost his nerve. He hung up.

He looked at the morphine dripping steadily. He tried to pace his heart to that soft rhythm and blank out all thoughts. After a while he succeeded. He supposed that's what people called _zen_. He liked it.

After a while, he really liked it.

_Yummy..._

.

.

_He looked down at himself. There was nothing but tin. His steps were clumsy. Breathing was difficult. He longed for the feel of the cards in his hands and the easy breathing that came with it. _

_He pushed on. That was his thing after all. He was the kind that pushed on. God knew he didn't have much more going for him than the ability too push through._

_He reached a city. He didn't quite know how. Suddenly it just was there. _

_He followed the road. He needed a poker table. Badly. So badly he could only drag himself._

_From the corner of his eye he spied, with his little eye, a set of blue orbs. They were enticing, mesmerizing. He took his very first clean breath of air in a what seemed like a million years. _

_Only, when he looked again, when the giddy sensation of air coursing through him subsided, the orbs were gone._

_._

_._

The phone buzzed in his hand. He would not pick up. He couldn't. He just couldn't.

_Don't worry! I've got you too. I'll take care of you. I'll take _very_ good care of you._

The cackle of laughter got louder and louder, a perverse glee dripping from it in time with the morphine drip drip dripping into his vein.

He closed his eyes hoping for silence, even the buzzing silence after the bullets had stopped.

Sleep was not so bad.

.

.

_He'd been walking for the longest of time. He was tired of it. Tired to the bone. A brick was just a brick was just a brick no matter the color._

_He found a door. Pushed through it. _

_People started coming to the door. They wanted things. They wanted words and comfort and closure. He was uncertain at first. He needed help himself. But there they were, asking. His tin self cranked up into action. He dispensed words and remedies and wisdom. He who couldn't be saved dispensed salvation as an over the counter medicine. Ah, the irony. Him, Tin Man, lost in his own cloud, brought here by accident, was handing out what others needed._

_After a while, he became comfortable. Behind his door, no one could see he was only tin, no one could hear the absence of a beating heart. And he became good at it. _

_He settled in this almost peace._

_He was the wizard of Oz._

_If only __he could push through the need to see that true blue again._

_._

_._

The phone buzzed again and again. He could have switched it off. But every time it buzzed, he knew Bones was on the other side. And it was comforting to know she was still trying to reach out to him. It was almost as if the connection was still there. Almost as if he hadn't done irreparable damage by not remembering. Almost as if he still deserved her.

_Almost as if you have ever deserved her, you mean._

.

.

Booth pulled the blankets to his chest and tried to warm up. But that was a cold no blanket could ward off. He shivered and shook with the phone tightly clutched in his hand. He wouldn't answer. She had to move on because he was just no good for her. What she saw wasn't the shining armor of a white knight. It was just his rusting tin in disguise. She needed more, better. Someone who would remember making love to her.

He pulled the blanket closer to his chest. But it wasn't a cold from the body, it was a cold from the soul.

There was promise in the malefic child's voice:

_Don't worry. I've got you, baby. It's going to be OK now. Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite!_


	10. Flesh

**Author's note: And they're back, baby! I missed them. And nice touch with the mastodon right at the end. Great use of metaphor and irony. Gotta love this show.**

**Note 2: Thank you to MickeyBoggs for betaing in such short notice.**

**Anyway.**

**On with the story.**

**With love**

**Jane **

.

Flesh

.

.

Silence was a good thing. He dressed himself with silence. No shouts and no bullets. No moans. It was a rare, are moment of almost peace. He missed the peace of the silence of Bones sitting by his side. She did silence well. She understood it. She understood his side of the silence. God, he missed Bones.

_What about me? Didn't you miss me?_

Booth looked back to the drip. No. He couldn't say that he did. He pulled the blankets up. The relative warmth of the silence was swiftly sucked out of him by the cackling of the malefic child's voice.

He held on to the cell phone as it buzzed again. His hands always warmed up a fraction when the phone rang.

He didn't hear the heavy footsteps until they were by his bedside.

_Some sniper, huh?_

"Yo, Pretty Boy, you gonna answer that?"

_No. No he sure as the hell he was in he was not gonna answer._ He lowered his eyes. God, the doctor was tall. In his convulsively tight hands, the phone did its best to warm his hands.

"Hand it over, then. Phones are not allowed in hospitals." He doctor held his palm up. Booth's only reply was to clutch it tighter in his shaking hands. "Simple question: why don't you answer it?"

.

.

The question might have been simple. The answer was not. All he wanted was to hear her voice again. But there was _stuff _he didn't want her to know, that he didn't want to rub off on her, stuff that he didn't want to burden her with.

But mostly, there was shame.

An embarrassment that paralyzed him.

"She is better off like this."

"Like what?"

Booth's eyes closed shut tight as if that simple movement of his eyelids could stop all the rotten stuff inside him that wanted to come out and be heard, only this was not the time, this was not the place. This was not the person and mostly, he was not_ that_ kind of guy. The kind that talks.

"Yo, I asked you a question. Be polite and answer, Pretty Boy."

.

.

There were years and years of silence. There was his mother's finger across her lips shushing him because decent folks don't air their dirty laundry in public. There was his father's fist because Booths don't telltale.

But the phone buzzed again in his clutched palm.

"Because I don't deserve her."

.

.

"You're shittin' me! You're shittin' me, right?"

There was something in the doctor's voice. It made Booth look.

The doctor shook his head. It could have been anything. But when he stood all his height and took the yet again buzzing phone from Booth's clutching hands, it translated disbelief.

"Get off the cross, my man. Other people need the wood and the nails" and he pressed the answer button. "Talk to your girl, Pretty Boy. Don't be a shit."

And he walked out of the room leaving Booth alone with the drip drip dripping morphine and an almost there Bones.

.

.

Her voice had a metal quality to it through the distance between the phone and his year. Slowly, Booth pulled the phone to his ear.

"Hi Bones." He expected a dressing down. He knew he deserved it.

"Booth." He was a tin man without a heart, a lion without courage and scarecrow without a brain. And he was out of road to keep walking. He looked at the morphine and its soothing cadence. _"_I've missed you."

For the briefest of moments, such was the power of her voice, he believed nothing had changed, that there wasn't half a world between them, that this was only one more Friday night.

"Awww, Bones!" There was an old, out of use levity to his voice that was at odds with the rest of him.

But then the dripping morphine became loud as a grandfather's clock, ticking away time. Or sins.

"I missed you. So much..." And the heaviness resettled on him.

There was a pause on her side. It wouldn't have bothered him, that silence. He was used to her silences while she considered something. But he knew her by heart. And she was pondering something she didn't quite know how to say. Something about him.

"Spill it, Bones."

_You are not going to like this!_

"Why didn't you answer the phone?"

"Because, Bones, you were asking too many questions."

"I only asked one."

Booth looked at his free hand. The flesh and skin and bones lost heat and color and softness. They became hard and cold and metal right before his very eyes. He flexed his fingers, not quite sure if he was resisting the feeling or capturing it.

"That was one too many." _Welcoming the tin it is, then._

"You're angry..."

"Not at you, Bones." Was that relief in her sigh? "Never at you."

"Then at yourself?" And she was going _there_. His finger hitched to press the END button. "Please don't hang up again, Booth."

He could do this. He could sit through this conversation. As long as the tin kept on spreading, as long as he stopped hearing his heart beating, as long as he was the tin man, he could sit through it with his poker self. He had done it before.

_Doesn't it worry you that you're not exactly dreaming the tin, that you're awake?_

"Booth?"

He should probably worry. But it was just so practical, not to have a heart that can be broken.

"Booth, are you there?"

No. He wasn't _really _there. Which was, all things considered, a good thing.

"Yeah, Bones. I'm here. I won't hang up. You'll just keep calling if I do."

"You called me too."

"Yeah."

"Tell me about what happened, Booth."

"Bones... there is nothing to tell."

_Yeah, right. Keep your distance. Keep the tin coming!_

_._

_._

_Ryan Leone's face was the one he saw the best. Pink and bright and hopeful. Did he have a girl friend? Had he ever fallen in love and felt beloved flesh next to his in his sleep? Leone had been so young. Like Teddy Parker. And his finger still felt the trigger and his shoulder still felt the weight of the weapon he had raised once more. He had not murdered. He had killed. He knew the difference. Only, was there really a difference? Wasn't the end result that other kids would not get to see their mothers?_

_._

_._

"Tell me about the boy, Booth." Leone's face smiled and there was blood in his mouth. Blood he could have saved if he had been paying attention.

"Ryan Leone."

"Yeah. Tell me about Leone."

"He was drawing, Bones. He was drawing the sky."

"And he won't get to finish it."

"No, he won't."

"But that's not what makes you angry."

"No."

"You're angry at yourself."

"No. Why would you say that? It's a war. I'm angry at the war."

"No, you're not. You're angry at yourself." _Bones! _He turned to morphine again.

"Stop it, Bones."

"You're angry that you didn't save him."

"Bones!"

"You're angry at yourself. And you're thinking of Teddy Parker and all the other boys you didn't save."

"No!"

"You can't save everybody, Booth!"

"I'm not trying to."

"You always are. You are always trying to save everybody."

"Stop it, Bones. It doesn't suit you. You're not a shrink or a therapist. You don't even believe that psycho babble bullshit."

"It's time you save yourself, Booth."

"You're no good at this, Bones, drop it. Don't embarrass yourself" Cruel. He had been cruel. He hated cruel.

He just needed her to stop.

"Bones..." He hoped she'd hang up because he had promised not to and he did not break promises.

"What about the morphine?"

His finger hitched again to press the END button.

"With your addictive personality, should you be taking morphine, Booth?" Her voice sounded cold. Clinical. She always did that when things got too close to home. When people hurt her feelings.

"I'm sorry, Bones" _Sorry I hurt you again._

"I don't care for excuses, Booth. I asked about the morphine."

It made him angry. It was his business. The morphine, his ghosts, his tin. It was his business, not hers. It made him angry, that invasion of his space.

_It's not like you're hurting anyone. Consenting adults and all that..._

"I've been shot, Bones. I think I deserve a pain killer" He knew she was talking to his rage. He wasn't that far gone he didn't see it. But it was like breathing after choking.

The anger was fresh air. And feeling after the numbness.

"A month ago, Booth. You were shot a month ago. 30 days." _30 days?_ "You don't need it anymore."

"I do. It fucking hurts!" _30 days?_

"But not your body..."

"And how would _you _know? Where you there? Were you, Bones?" _Why don't you bleed when I hurt you?_

"Yes." Her voice was so small he had to strain to hear it. "I was with you every step of the way."

"Don't bullshit me, Bones. I was here. Alone."

"You were never alone."

"Don't talk like you love me, Bones."

_Scream a bit louder, you two-bit pathetic ass-wipe._

"I do." Her voice was soft calm certainty. And it just angered him further.

_ Nice development, don't you think? _

"And you expect me to buy that?"

"I'm not selling. I'm giving it for free."

_Oh, look at that! Isn't that endearing? _The malefic child cackled._ You could almost believe it._

The noise inside his head was too much. Bones and that child and the ghosts. It was driving him insane.

For a moment he lost his iron control because he was done with hurting her.

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" He ordered the voice inside his head. He couldn't be sure, but he could swear he had said it out loud. The silence spoke volumes. "Bones... I... Look..."

"Booth... It's OK. It's not your fault. I was scared then."

"I... Bones, I wasn't talking... I wasn't talking to you."

"Then whom?"

.

.

_He didn't know. Not really. But every time he tried to identify the voice his head would spin and hurt and he just wanted to close his eyes and let it take over him, because he was just so tired of trying to stand. _

_._

_._

"Booth. It's OK. I've got you now. Shhh, it's OK."

"I just want it to shut up."

"It will."

.

.

_It did. Eventually. But it screamed and shouted, abused and insulted until it did._

.

.

"You're an addict, Booth. And you need to let it go."

"I'm not an addict... But it hurts."

"But I'll hold you until it doesn't."

"How?"

"Just like you held me when I had nightmares."

.

.

He called the doctor. As the man pulled the needle out of his vein, the child threw a tantrum. _You're not going to be able to just walk away. Just you wait!_ And as the cold settled in, it smirked, poisonous. _Are we there yet?_ And as the shaking took over his limbs and made breathing impossible, the laughter just rolled and rolled until it was all he could hear. The doctor touched Booth's hand. Like a ripple of a stone in the water, it pushed the cold and the tin away for the briefest instant.

"Good choice, Pretty Boy. Good choice."

.

.

Bones stayed with him. Her presence on the other end of the line soothed him though the pain that crushed him, through the freezing that spread through his veins, through the flashes of heat that burned and through the shaking that rattled his body.

She told him it was going to be OK and he believed her.

She told him about the lab and the weather. She spoke of her days in Limbo and about how she was waiting for him to go back to working with the FBI because the gun always goes in first.

She told him about her book and read it to him.

She kept talking even when all he could do was clutch the phone because his voice box wouldn't work through the withdrawal.

As she continued talking, he let her words wash over him. Her voice warmed him and her surrogate embrace through the distance stilled the tremors.

Sometime during the longest night and unending day he did his math on how compatible they were, how good they were together. Closing his eyes, he sent up a prayer to anyone willing to listen to stop sending him signals that they were right for each other.

Been there, done that- and fucked it up. He knew every reason they were meant to be. He also knew better than anyone why they shouldn't. Couldn't.

He had damned them to ever be apart.

No matter how much he wanted.

.

.

Brennan put the phone down in the early morning light. It was hard to let go of that life line. But Booth was asleep, beaten by the sheer physical exhaustion of resistance. She had listened to his breathing softening and loosing the gasping quality. She had compassed her own inhales and exhales to that soft sound. She had never been so scared in her whole life. Scared that she didn't know what she was doing. Scared that she was wrong in pushing this. Scared that Booth would not get out of this in one piece. Mostly, scared of how absolutely terrified she was, a fear that fed on itself.

But as Booth had slept on the other side of the line, softly breathing, she had felt at peace with the swelling in her heart, the steady beat inside her chest that seemed to sing to her. Yes, there was a long road ahead. But she wanted to be there. She knew that she could be there. That she would fight any battle necessary to be there. She would slay dragons and ghosts, but she would earn the right to walk beside him. Even if it meant to fight him too.

The night is always darker before dawn.

As exhaustion won that first battle, she fell asleep

And dreamed of flesh.

_Do you love me?_

_Yes. Do you want me to prove it to you?_

_If you're not too tired._

_._

_._

Serenely, Booth slept. His ghosts looked from afar. He knew they were there even in his sleep. But for once in longer than he could remember, he did not dream of them. He dreamed of two people breathing softly, not quite asleep, not quite awake, hands linked over naked skin, warm bodies spooning.

_Do you love me?_

_Yes. _The woman answered._ Do you want me to prove it to you?_

_Are you going to be there with me tomorrow, when they slice my brain open?_

_Yes._

_That's all the proof I need._

_I can still give you further evidence._

Both man and woman laughed then and what had started hours before continued into the light of the most uncertain of days of their lives. _It was real._

Booth dreamed of warmth and skin. And smiled.

He dreamed of flesh.


	11. Going in the same direction

**Author's note: Dear friends, this is it, the last chapter to this story. I am not sorry to see it put to bed (pun intended). This was one of those stories that bites back, that is difficult and demanding. I usually am able to keep more of a distance. This one was too close for comfort.**

**I thank each and every one of you for the reviews, the alerts, the favorites. Thank you so much.**

**Thank you as well to MickeyBoggs. Hope you have made it home already.**

**You all be good now!**

**And perhaps one final review, especially if you have kept silent all this time.**

**With love**

**Jane**

**.**

**.**

Going in the same direction.

.

.

"Brennan."

The ring tone pushed away any grogginess of sleep. She barely slept anyway, the phone her constant worry.

Footsteps rasped on the other side of her door. She knew he was there even before he asked.

"Are you home?"

She lost her breath, a violent whoosh of air that rushed out of her lungs. She barely dared to hope. She ran to the door and opened.

It was like being hit with the proverbial ton of bricks and the only thing she wasn't sure about was if her heart could cope with the overflow as she stared at Booth standing at her door, phone to his ear and jacket in his hand. She filled herself with him: how much thinner, gaunter, really, he looked. Older. Sadder.

Any other day she would have just stepped aside and allow him entry. Today, she reached to his hand and took it in hers.

"Yeah, I'm here," and it was the honest to god truth. "I'm right here".

It took his feet a couple of seconds to move, but he accepted the invitation, his hand pressing hers lightly, his eyes incapable of leaving hers.

.

.

Booth wasn't sure he could have walked through the door if she hadn't been holding his hand. His eyes filled but did not overflow.

And then Brennan wrapped herself around him.

Carefully, tentatively, as if he was exploring a new house, he burrowed his face in the bed-warmed curve of her neck. He recognized that scent of hers, lavender and lilies and her body fit against his as it always did, though she had lost weight- more than she could afford- and looked older and sadder.

And though it was different- because life had beaten the shit out of them- it was still the same: he was home.

.

.

Brennan had prepared herself for this moment. She had analyzed and scripted it, reviewed and edited in too many versions. Eventually, he would come home. And she was waiting. But nothing, absolutely nothing had prepared her for this, for this _overwhelming_ of such magnitude she couldn't begin to define, an absolute joy that danced with the absolute terror of the _what now_.

He _knew_.

She had been plain enough in telling him. Mostly because he needed to hear it. That she had needed to say, that she was now wide open to sorrow, it was irrelevant. He was home. Booth was home. And that was all that had really mattered, to bring him back.

But he knew now. And this was where the questions she didn't know how to answer would start. And this was the one test she knew for a fact she stood a good chance of failing. Because this was only her and this was real life and there was no editing or rewriting.

He knew. And still, he held on to her, squeezing her in his arms without a word.

Without heels she was shorter than he was and her neck bent backwards to accommodate his head seeking her heat. It was painful and uncomfortable. But she wouldn't break the contact. So much between them had been about pain, what was a neck between them?

.

.

Booth was terrified of the moment he would have to look into her eyes and deal. Until then, he was stuck in limbo. Between her words of love and the fact that no one, _no one_ could possibly forgive two oblivious years working side by side with someone who made love to you and then just deleted that from the memory bank. Someone who still could not remember. Was there any worse betrayal?

He wanted nothing more than a do over. Nothing more than to be the forgotten one. He could deal with that.

He wasn't used to being the bastard.

He much preferred the victim role.

He held on for one more second. Just one more second, he promised himself before he had to face his role as the villain.

.

.

Brennan wasn't quite sure how to move the scene along. As a writer, she knew that nothing good came out of prolonging a scene beyond its usefulness.

She was new at this.

She didn't know how to be a real girl.

"Booth?"

.

.

It was a sigh that snaked its way through his blood stream, that whisper of his name against his skin.

And just like that his time was over. Now he had to face the music.

"Booth," she tried his name again. "It's alright, Booth, I've got you now"

A sob, an almighty sob, made of all the grief and pain and anger and all that was both wrong and possibly right with him made it through his mouth and big fat tears pooled at his throat.

And just like that, she made him feel loved and, quite possibly, the luckiest bastard alive.

Just like that.

.

.

Brennan felt the familiar twinge of shame and fear she always felt when Booth was vulnerable, because she knew all too well how easy it would be for her to trample all over him. She was the elephant in a china shop. She didn't know how to be any different. And fragile Booth, it was a terrible thing to see. Maybe because she was so used to him being the strong one, to him being strong for both of them, to him being the one that comforted and the one that sorted the problems and slayed her dragons her and showed her the way. She didn't know how to guide him through this and his demons seemed to mock her.

She could only try. Even if it consumed her.

When he would have pulled back, she wrapped her arms around him, tightly. So tight that it surprised even herself.

"It's not a guy hug, Booth. But I wish you would take it."

.

.

He did. He took the arms she offered him. Somewhere, some time, he must have done something good because there she was, whispering in his ear.

"I'm your girl Booth, I'm _that_ girl."

If only he could be the _that_ guy again. The one that was not broken beyond repair, the one that would drag her into the pit with him.

If only he could still recognize the face that stared back at him when he shaved, the same face that he had tried and tried to reconcile with what he was now.

.

.

She couldn't tell how long she stood there holding his quivering body in her arms. But during that spell where they just _were,_ she discovered that yes, she could do this. That she really was _that _girl.

Relieved, she pulled him to the sofa with her and took his face in her hands.

"You look older."

.

.

There are things you can't count on. Like the tides that come and go when they please, or the sun, when it burns instead of warming or the rain, when the land is parched and hungry and the drops refuse to spill. Or that the God will hear your prayers.

And then there were the permanent things: like the mountains not moving or the rivers staying in their bed. Or Bones' bluntness, so comforting in its honesty. Or the heart she didn't think she had, beating steady in her chest, so loud he could hear it.

"You too. You look older. You look beautiful, Bones." Like a morning you never thought you'd live to see. "You are beautiful."

His hand rested inside hers and it was a strange thing to see because her hand was small and dainty and yet it held his, pulling him back to the land of the living, pulling him to safety and sanity. A hand so small to hold his whole world in. He kissed that dainty hand, slowly, absorbing her, adjusting slowly to pleasure coming in the heels of anguish. His heart, burning with sensation, like a foot that has fallen asleep under the pressure of your weight and then wakes up when you get up to walk.

That hand made him happy.

.

.

Brennan studied Booth's hand in hers. Some time, a lifetime ago, she had lost the right to hold that hand. Because he hadn't said the right thing, because he hadn't said it in the right sort of way, she had lost the right the hold it. Because he didn't say _I want to give us a chance because I love you_. Because he had been human and had saved something of himself – just like she had and she had been too afraid to accept that hand.

She would fight for the right to hold it again. That hand, so much larger than hers, so much stronger than hers needed her now. And wasn't that her very own miracle? That somehow, though she had been undeserving, he still needed her. He still allowed himself to need her.

Booth had saved her soul a long time ago. He had brought people into her life, knocking down her walls and breaking all her windows while he did it. He had brought warmth and affection, voices and laughter. He called her _friend._

She wanted to call him _love_.

That he was there, sitting on her couch, in her living room, with his hand in hers?

This was the tangible proof that she had needed, she who did not believe in the unprovable. She took his hand to her lips and kissed, the lightest of kisses, summer rain on his skin.

.

.

That kiss, that innocent kiss, frightened him the most. It had been so long. Longer than he could remember because _it had been real_ and he couldn't recall it.

He couldn't risk it. He shouldn't because he had broken her once.

The way he was now? He would do it again. He was not the same person, his armor no longer shined.

He pulled away.

.

.

Brennan felt the distance before he had even begun to disentangle his hand from hers.

She opened her fingers and let him go.

Sometimes, what gets you through hell is that you are in too deep to pull out.

His back hunched on the way out of her living room.

This wasn't out of her life.

_Baby steps, Brennan_. It was out of her living room. Only.

.

.

Booth took refuge in her bathroom, the closest, safest door.

Surrounded by her quotidian, by her intimacy, he felt... safe. It was a safe way to be close, to participate in her life without tarnishing it.

.

.

The old Brennan would have taken a cab and run home.

What could the new Brennan do?

She walked after him, knocking softly and entering when he did not reply.

He stood by the mirror, lost in the lines of his face.

.

.

Booth looked at his reflection and tried to identify the stranger that looked back at him. It was no more than lines, unfamiliar. There was that vague feeling that he should recognize those lines, that they should mean something to him.

But he drew a blank.

There seemed to be nothing left of him.

.

.

He looked fascinated by the reflection of his face in the mirror.

In the dark of the bathroom, Brennan walked behind him and stared at the face there.

"Things had to change, Booth."

"I miss the way it used to be." She rested her chin on his shoulder, stretching on her tip toes. Her hands ran straight lines over the length of his arms. She missed it too, sometimes. "I... I don't recognize that face. I miss knowing me..."

His voice trailed way. He was slipping into the mirror, fading from her grasp.

"I know who you are."

His eyes attempted focus.

"You are Seeley Booth. My partner. The best man I know." Her hands slid effortlessly up and down his arms. "My best friend." She talked directly at the reflection in the mirror. "My paladin."

Brennan filled her lungs with air.

"You don't flinch. All the rest? It's just window dressing."

.

.

Booth slid his arms up and across his chest. He couldn't live up to her faith in him. But when he would have closed himself, he looked at that darkened mirror and the distorted lines fused into a face.

It was a new face full of lines from an old life.

But it was a face that he could live with just as long as she kept on looking at it and he could see that resolve in her.

It was a face he could, perhaps, learn to live in.

His hands pulled her arms around him, across his chest, across his heart. He wrapped himself in those arms, like a comforter.

_Baby steps, Booth._

The feel of her body pressed to his back, the pressing of her curves against his hard flatness just made him want to try. The same way her voice had soothed him during all those nights when the ugly child had raised his evil head again and made him want to survive the night.

How many nights had he been on the telephone to her since that needle came out of his arm?

"I don't remember... Temperance."

.

.

She could lie and tell him it didn't matter. But it did. And every time, it broke her heart all over again.

"That night, Booth? That was only a night. What's between us is more than that."

.

.

That cold he hadn't quite been able to shake off subsided. In its stead, a need. In the mirror, her eyes shone the light that could guide him. For once, just for this once, he would be humble enough to accept help. Hers. He pulled her hand to his heart and felt it crank and sputter to life like an old engine. His skin warmed and inside his veins, something fluidly warm pulsed.

"OK." And even that one word had warmth.

He turned and Brennan slid easily into the space of his arms.

"I don't know how to do this. I don't remember. It's been so long since I... touched someone."

.

.

Brennan had read about how babies, even well fed babies, would wither and die from the lack of touch, a loving touch.

Her hand, the one over his heart, remained still, the other held his hand and brought it to her face. Her forehead touched his.

Her heart beat wildly inside her.

"You're doing so well, Booth"

.

.

Her mouth was there, so close to his he could feel her sweet breath against his starved one. He moved slowly, against her skin and there was a shy tentativeness to his touch that started with the lightest of touches and it fed on the starvation for her. He tried to hold back, that devouring hunger that suddenly was all consuming, the only thing he was aware off. His arm moved from the safety of their joint bodies to encircle her, to pull her to him, to show her that he was, finally, there, which surprised even himself. That need so raw that it burned him, so new that it startled him.

He pulled her close, so close until all the air between them was pushed out and there was only her form still in her sleep clothes and his hard worn street clothes that still smelled of the death at the place he had been in.

Then, there was only her heat, her scent and little else.

.

.

As far as kisses go, this one was not inventing anything new. His lips touched hers and her mouth opened to welcome his. There was a slight hesitation, something like a permission request, and then there was a flicker of his tongue, an invitation. No, there was no novelty in the mechanics of the kiss. It was just a guy kissing a girl.

And yet, she had never been kissed like that.

The kiss grew, she gave herself to it and there it was, the colossal difference: she was kissing with all of herself. It wasn't something of the mouth, of the tongue, of the lips. It was, surprisingly, even if she had thought about this so much, something of the whole self. It was what she had yearned for so long. She was lost in that. Lost in love. What she had envied everybody else, she had found it in an otherwise unremarkable kiss.

.

.

Momentarily he would get back to himself. Momentarily, the sanity of the impossible gap between them would come back to him. It always did.

Except that as his hands moved to encircle her and his whole body moved into her, that particular shoe did not find it fit and proper to drop.

And it was inebriating.

Headspinning.

Bedazzling.

Of their own volition, his arms swept her up.

Of their own decision, his legs carried them out the bathroom.

And of its own accord, his body fiercely reacted to her.

.

.

She couldn't have explained how it happened. Only suddenly, she was on her back, in her unmade bed with Booth almost hovering over her, not quite pressing her, only more there than he had ever been in all their years together. More solid, as if his presence was of all of him, not just his body, not just his heart.

She was no expert, had no quantifiable evidence, but he was body, heart and _soul _with her. More so than _that _night. And that, intuitive leap as it might have been, was all stood between the question _Do you love me _and "I love you, Booth."

.

.

His body was in a hurry. His body was starving standing before a feast. His body wanted to gorge, to devour, glut itself on hers. The impetus was unstoppable.

He stood between her legs, ready and throbbing, tugging, pulling, pushing at hers. And were it not for those four words, he would have just savaged her. He had been through too much to be able to hold back. But those four words silenced the rumor of his need, the static of his desire, the white noise of his blood running hot inside his veins. Those four words.

_It doesn't count if the guy says it when he's on top of you._

Camille's voice resounded inside his head. No. It didn't count.

So he stopped. It would probably kill him, but he stopped looking at Brennan, her clothes half torn from her, her skin flushed and beading with sweat, her legs parted welcoming him.

He hunched back, the movement releasing his arms from the pressure of holding himself above her.

He took her face in his hands.

He knew what he wanted to say. It should have sounded like _Temperance, I love you_. What came out was like a sucker punch to both of them.

"Will you be there in the morning when they cut my brain open?"

.

.

Temperance Brennan did not cry. No. Through the direst of straights, in the darkest of nights, she had never allowed herself to cry. But when it sunk in, those words from so long ago, tears bloomed like tropical flowers in her eyes. She just couldn't stop that flow. Her heart stopped and restarted, her stomach lurched and her gut contracted in a singularity of pain and pleasure she wasn't sure she could endure.

She had made her peace with the fact that he didn't remember.

That question gave her back the past and turned it into the future.

.

.

"Yes." He couldn't be sure if it was an assent to the reality of that night or an answer to his flashback question. But the words seemed to flow as if his mouth was responding to another brain.

"Then it's all the proof I need"

She opened her arms and he slid in, easy as rain.

"I love you, Bones. My Bones."

.

.

.

.

.

Later, so much later, as the morning whispered at their windows, lovers made love and war in their bedrooms across the city, the state, the country. Booth and Brennan slept tight, no dreams left, only flesh and skin and bones, sated, warm. Complete.

His hand rested on the curve of her hip, his foott poked through her two in the tangle of warm sheets. Her back fit into his hip, her hands held on lightly to his arm.

Their breath- certainly only one for the compass they kept in tandem- was light, happy, if a breath can be happy.

Booth pulled the comforter over them without really awakening.

Tucked together like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that if they had been running towards each other for so long, now, at least, they seemed to be going in the same direction.


End file.
